From the director …

I am honoured to be part of this transition of the Art Gallery of York University into The Joan and Martin Goldfarb Gallery with the grand opening of our new stand-alone gallery. This transformation has been made possible through the generosity of our patrons, Joan and Martin Goldfarb, whose insight and financial contribution has enabled the construction of a stunning new building. The Goldfarb’s are long-standing supporters of the arts at York University, donating the university’s most valued art works, supporting the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design through the Summer Institute in Visual Arts, the Goldfarb Lectures, the Centre for Fine Arts, and more. They led the Accolade Project at York and have come to be synonymous with the arts at York University, a status which this new building acknowledges. Designed by internationally acclaimed architect Siamak Hariri, the new gallery has three distinct exhibition spaces and an event and performance pavilion. The butterfly-shaped building, with its central reception area and four uniquely shaped ‘wings’, is a dedicated program space that will serve as a critical space for the presentation of art through exhibitions, performances, and workshops.

In addition to core supporters, the Goldfarbs and the University, with special acknowledgement of President Lenton, there are so many people to recognise. Before setting the new gallery’s path forward, we embarked on a process of community consultation, pulling together visioning and steering committees of arts professionals, university colleagues and faculty, artists, curators, students, and community members. These conversations have been rich in identifying core needs—that the building be centrally located on campus for visibility and accessibility; that the design be iconic, acting as a beacon for the arts on campus, in the heart of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design, embedded within our surrounding neighbourhood and the larger art community. Essential is the inclusion of several professional exhibition spaces that address the changing and challenging needs of contemporary artists and promote student, faculty, and public engagement. The addition of the Pavilion, an adaptable forum space that will act as a workshop, meeting, lecture, and performance space, and bring in our outreach music and spoken word programs, came from conversations with key community members, with special acknowledgement to Nathan Baya and Randell Adjei who identified the lack of performances spaces in the Jane Finch neighbourhood. And, fundamental to this consultation was a direction to use this redefining moment as an opportunity to establish a critical path forward for York University’s art collection. With this scope in mind, working with Hariri Pontarini Architects we reimagined and transformed our old gallery space into a Visible Vault and Study Centre to support student and scholarly research.

The thought and energy that went into this pivotal transition is tantamount. We are now The Goldfarb Gallery and for this we must acknowledge the perceptive work of our architects, whose sensitivity to site and material is evident. Crucial to their work is the labour of Facilities staff at York who put in endless hours, offering their knowledge and understanding to bring us a building that is beyond its scope. We must give our gratitude to Advancement, a department that has been with us from the inception of the new stand-alone gallery, working to celebrate our key donors as well as build new relationships to establish a solid ground for our transformation. It would be remiss to not acknowledge all of the staff at AGYU who were keen to seize this opportunity, bringing their experiences to conceive a vision and program for the gallery moving forward while tending to the details. Together we have developed a program that embraces our local communities while also reaching across the globe with a strong commitment to building a conducive environment for artistic exploration and experimentation, affirming art’s pedagogical value, promoting the value of art while also challenging what constitutes art, and facilitating knowledge exchange between artists, curators, educators, students, and multiple publics.

We would only be a shell without the artists who work with us, and so we would like to give special honour to all the artists who are presenting their work in our inaugural exhibitions, with special acknowledgement to Lori Blondeau who collected stones from underneath this site, using elements from the land to mark this new history as well as acknowledging the long history of Indigenous stewardship of the land we now occupy. Jeneen Frei Njootli’s work Fighting for the title to not be pending will recede into the crevasses of this new building, continuing to occupy it far into the future. And we also present the renowned work of El Anastui as a reflection of the university’s long commitment to the visual arts, as he attended the International Sculpture Conference on Keele campus in the late seventies and claims this experience as being influential to his work. We also want to acknowledge our recent acquisition of Tim Whiten’s work and offer him thanks for his generosity but also for his dedication to York University as a long-standing faculty member in the visual arts department.

Thank you all who are joining us for these opening exhibitions, being a part of this pivotal moment, and joining us in our metamorphosis.

Jenifer Papararo, director/curator