Ottawa, ON, April 27, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Celebrate 2023’s CMA Award Winners
At a virtual ceremony the afternoon of April 26th, the 2023 winners of the Canadian Museums Association awards were announced. These laureates shine a light on notable achievements within our community, inspiring us all with their dedication, vision, and hard work. Please join us in congratulating them and celebrating their success.
Here are this year’s winners:
Award for Outstanding Achievement: Exhibitions
Winner: Art Gallery of Alberta — Scents of Movement, Scents of Place (Edmonton, AB)
Through the use of scent, Scents of Movement, Scents of Place allowed visitors to have unconventional aesthetic experiences that challenged the ways they know and interact with the world around them. The exhibition fore-fronted more-than-visual ways to learn and interact with the world and prioritized non-visual aesthetic experiences, putting forth that culture is not held and learnt in a sterilized environment but that smell—among other intangible things—holds culture, place and can create belonging and be called upon through all of our senses.
Winner: Musée de la Gaspésie — À la confluence des mondes (Gaspé, QC)
À la confluence des mondes (At the Confluence of Worlds) is the permanent exhibition inaugurated in 2022 at the Musée de la Gaspésie. By plunging into the heart of the history of the Gaspé Peninsula, from 380 million years ago to the present day, the exhibition gives a global vision of the history of the Gaspé Peninsula to a large audience. Produced in close collaboration with MASSIVart, which ensured the management, the artistic direction and the 2D - 3D design of the project, the exhibition uses technological means such as immersive environments, video mapping, and the projection of original animation.
Honourable mention: Ontario Science Centre — Behind Racism: Challenging the Way We Think (Toronto, ON)
A newly developed travelling exhibition, Behind Racism: Challenging the Way We Think shows visitors how processes and systems can lead to dangerous biases against people different from us. Developed with the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, the highly interactive exhibition uses the lens of science to help us challenge prejudice and racism, work together and celebrate our differences.
Honourable mention: Avataq Cultural Institute and the Canadian Museum of Nature — ᓄᓇᑦᑎᓂ ᑕᑯᒥᓇᕐᑐᖁᑎᕗᑦ / Our Land, Our Art (Ottawa, ON)
The newest installation in the Northern Voices Gallery, a dedicated space presenting special exhibitions curated by northern indigenous peoples, ᓄᓇᑦᑎᓂ ᑕᑯᒥᓇᕐᑐᖁᑎᕗᑦ / Our Land, Our Art / Notre territoire, notre art features installations created by Nunavik artists, inspired by the Avataq Cultural Institute’s collections. The exhibition aims to illustrate the connection artists maintain with nature, territory and community. The entire exhibition is available tri-lingually in English, French and Inuktitut, including the associated web pages.
Award for Outstanding Achievement: Audience Outreach
Winner: MEM - Centre des mémoires montréalaises — Montréal en 5 sens (Montreal, QC)
An effort to better represent Montreal's marginalized groups, the Montréal en 5 sens (Montreal in 5 Senses) exhibition by MEM, the Montreal Memory Centre was a cultural mediation project that offered 40 free workshops on the city and the five senses. Each workshop of this cultural mediation project included a sensory experimentation phase and an artistic production. They were a pretext for opening up spaces for exchange with the public about the city and offering enriching experiences to participants. The workshops are led by a facilitator from the MEM and the artist or partner who developed it. They take place in the organizations' premises or in a nearby park.
Honourable Mention: Fort Calgary — Orange Shirt Day Walking Tour (Calgary, AB)
For the Award of Outstanding Achievement in Audience Outreach, an honourable mention was awarded to another nominated project, Fort Calgary's Orange Shirt Day Walking Tour. In partnership with the Indigenous-led Colouring it Forward Reconciliation Society, the project saw settler-led contemplation of reconciliation and the fort’s colonial history.
Award for Outstanding Achievement: Social Impact
Winner: MONOVA, the Museum of North Vancouver — Main exhibit gallery (Vancouver, BC)
A sense of geographical place is weaved through the Gallery, which showcases Indigenous voices, all rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing and First Peoples’ Principles of Learning. Educational and public programs were conceived and are delivered by local Nation members, including tours for Squamish-language speakers and students which included a traditional Coast Salish Garden developed under the direction of Indigenous ethnobotanists and elders. The space is located in the highly popular tourism and local destination Lonsdale Quai, making it a prominent opportunity to visible demonstrate Indigenous sovereignty through museum programming.
Honourable Mention: Canadian Museum for Human Rights — Witness Blanket Conservation Project (Winnipeg, MB)
The Canadian Museum for Human Rights, winner of this year's Award of Outstanding Achievement for Stewardship of Collections, presented Witnessblanket.ca, sharing stories of the Witness Blanket, the work of art made by Kwakwaka’wakw artist Carey Newman to recognize the atrocities of residential schools and symbolize reconciliation. This interactive site tells stories in heart wrenching and courageous video testimony from survivors, and features resource guides for teachers to bring education about residential schools to all students.
Award for Outstanding Achievement: Research
Winner: Beaverbrook Art Gallery — Wabanaki Modern: The Artistic Legacy of the 1960s “Micmac Indian Craftsmen” (Fredericton, NB)
This year’s winning research project focused on rebuilding cultural identity and celebrating an important part of history. Led by the Beaverbrook’s Manager of Collections and Exhibitions, John Leroux, and Wabanaki artist and curator Emma Hassencahl-Perley from the Tobique First Nation. Wabanaki Modern: The Artistic Legacy of the 1960s “Micmac Indian Craftsmen,” includes a book, a 22-minute documentary film, and a major exhibition at the Beaverbrook that will travel to the Abbe Museum in Maine in 2023.
Honourable mention: McMichael Canadian Art Collection — From Water to Water: A Way Through the Trees (Kleinburg/Vaughan, ON)
From Water to Water: A Way Through the Trees is a site-specific mural installation by Anishinaabe/ Ojibwe artist Bonnie Devine that considers how the gallery sits upon an ancient trade route that connected Niigani-gichigami (Lake Ontario) to Mnjikaning Fish Weirs on Lake Simcoe. This remapping of traditional knowledge and Indigenous place names gives voice to the surrounding land and waterways, and their histories.
Honourable Mention: Goose Lane Editions and York University — Qummut Qukiria!: Art, Culture, and Sovereignty Across Inuit Nunaat and Sapmi: Mobilizing the Circumpolar North (Frederiction, NB and Toronto, ON)
In this book, Sámi, Inuit and non-Indigenous artists, curators and others consider the resurgence of contemporary circumpolar Indigenous cultural expressions, and Inuit art’s role in language preservation, social well-being, and cultural identity.
Honourable Mention: Pointe-à-Callière, cité d’archéologie et d’histoire de Montréal — Montréal, Capitale: L’exceptionnelle histoire du site archéologique du marché Sainte-Anne et du parlement de la province du Canada (Montreal, Capital City) (Montreal, QC)
Over the course of the project, more than 350,000 artifacts and ecofacts in the St. Anne's Market heritage site changed what we know about the history of Montreal, as documented in the book Montreal, Capital City. The book covered the history of both the site itself and the city of Montreal as it transformed over the course of two decades.
Award for Outstanding Achievement: Stewardship of Collections
Winner: Canadian Museum for Human Rights and The Manitoba Museum – Witness Blanket Conservation project
The Witness Blanket was created by Kwakwaka'wakw artist Carey Newman (Hayalthkin'geme) with more than 800 items gathered from sites and from survivors of residential schools across Canada. The eclectic, evocative items range from a full-sized, functioning door to a child’s single shoe. Carried out in an exhibition gallery at the CMHR and in the Manitoba Museum’s conservation laboratory, Canadian Museum of Human Rights staff worked with staff from the Manitoba Museum as well as Indigenous conservation technician Skylar Wall. The conservation project team and artist worked collaboratively to determine which materials are used in the various treatments, which often means choosing natural over synthetic materials and limiting the use of chemicals. Reversible practices ensure that anything done to each piece can also be undone if needed, now or in the future.
Award for Distinguished Service
Winner: John Tate
John Tate started with the Darthmouth Heritage Museum and later became the Nova Scotia Museum’s homegrown version of TV’s famously resourceful MacGyver and is perhaps the only person to have made both casts of mastodon molars and redesigned donation boxes for easier use. His innovative mounts may support a timelessly solid, 55-pound quartz, or a breathtakingly fragile and tiny Mik’maw basket made of black ash. He performs repairs, reproductions and, occasionally, small miracles of economy. To turn a support post into a “tree,” John used a second-hand blender and “innovated a paper mâché process to create a bark covering that would usually cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.” Jurors said John’s work was important and “above critique.” In addition to winning this award, John is a winner of the Award of Excellence in Museum Practices by the Association of Nova Scotia Museums.
Museum Volunteer Award: Group
Presented in partnership with the Canadian Federation of Friends of Museums
Winner: Missisquoi Historical Society and Museum’s Apple Pie Festival Committee
For nearly four decades, the Missisquoi Historical Society and Museum’s Apple Pie Festival Committee volunteers have promoted and preserved local history. The volunteer group consists of six incredibly dedicated core members; Pamela Realffe, Nicole Blinn, Robert Deschamps, Natalie Ingalls, Suzanne Dubé and Mona Beaulac, and grows to 80 additional volunteers annually to facilitate this living history event. Volunteers have contributed an extraordinary 10,000 hours to organizing and hosting the festival and have welcomed over 30,000 museum visitors.
Museum Volunteer Award: Individual
Presented in partnership with the Canadian Federation of Friends of Museums
Winner: Joan Goldfarb
Joan Goldfarb is a long-time volunteer in the Canadian cultural heritage sector and is being recognized for her transformational contributions to advance Canadian art appreciation, support education and research, as well as being a visionary leader and role model. Joan’s commitment is enduring and passionate to Canadian art. Along with her husband, she is the major sponsor of the Joan and Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts, and more recently the Joan and Martin Goldfarb Art Gallery of York University, Keele Campus in North York.
Governor General's History Award for Excellence in Museums: History Alive!
Presented in partnership with Canada's History Society
Winner: McCord Stewart Museum – Indigenous Voices of Today: Knowledge, Trauma, Resilience
Indigenous Voices of Today: Knowledge, Trauma, Resilience, a new permanent exhibit at the McCord Stewart Museum, is a project that the sheds light on Indigenous knowledge, explores an often-traumatic shared history, and celebrates the incredible capacities of Indigenous resilience. It is a vital and visually stunning exploration of eleven Indigenous nations in Quebec. The exhibit was designed in collaboration with la Boîte Rouge Vif, an Indigenous not-for-profit dedicated to the preservation and transmission of cultural heritage. The late Élisabeth Kaine combined one hundred objects from the museum’s Indigenous Cultures collection, carefully selected by Innu curator Jean St-Onge, with more than eighty inspiring stories into a visually stunning visitor experience.
Barbara A. Tyler Award in Museum Leadership
Winner: Dr. Denis Longchamps
Awarded every two years, the Barbara A. Tyler Award in Museum Leadership recognizes excellence in museum management and leadership within the Canadian museum community
Through a pandemic that knocked so much off course, Dr. Denis Longchamps, Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery has his museum on the road to sustainability. He has raised awareness of the importance of clay and glass in Canadian art and instilled a new sense of pride of the Gallery within Kitchener-Waterloo. Denis has reinvigorated an organization that was in poor financial health and had a fading reputation. He developed a sound business model, reorganized staffing to be more effective, increased grant revenues and private donations, and opened the gallery’s doors to diverse communities in innumerable ways. He has balanced the budget and brought national recognition to the gallery once again.
