McIntosh Gallery in the Winter

   A couple of days ago, I did a post about "Stratford in the Winter" and I am lazingly using the title again for this one. It is still winter after all and I am again recommending something local which you should have a look at and, in this case, also listen to. McIntosh is closer than Stratford since it is on the campus up at Western and it too welcomes the general public and is open all year.

The Sound of Music in the Mountains
  The exhibition, "Glacial Resonance" opened on Friday, Jan. 19, with an "artist-led exhibition tour," which we missed, but the exhibition will be around until March 16.
I learned of it, too late, from Western News and it is to that publication you should turn since Ms. Ferguson's description in it is a good one and I would start with it, rather than the formal exhibition notice that follows. Be sure to listen to the audio.

“Melting Glaciers Main Muse for McIntosh Installation by Paul Walde: Works by Former London Artist and Western Grad Explore Impact of Global Warming," Keri Ferguson, Western News, Jan. 16, 2024.

   The description of the exhibition offered by McIntosh is here: "Paul Walde: Glacial Resonance." Mr. Walde is a northern Ontario boy who went to Western and is now at the University of Victoria. Here is part of the description:

Raising environmental awareness through art

"Glacial Resonance" brings together Paul Walde’s iconic 2013 project Requiem for a Glacier with his newest video and sound installation Glacial. Both address concerns about land use and the impacts of the climate crisis, 10 years apart, with glaciers as the primary focus and an urgent sign of the Earth’s tipping point to an irrevocably changed climate....

Glacial is a meditative durational experience, sharing distant vistas and extreme details of the Coleman Glacier at Mount Baker (Kulshan), in Washington State, along with the sounds of the glacier melting, modified through musical instruments used as speakers. Over the course of five hours violin, viola, cello, double bass, bass drum, and a cymbal fitted with sonic transducers transform field recordings into tones which form the basis of the composition and act as conduits for the glacier to communicate resonant frequencies."

A New Director at the McIntosh Gallery

  I also learned from Ms. Ferguson, who seems to write a lot for Western News, that Lisa Daniels becomes the new director on March 4th. 

   I was talking with another Western retiree the other day and he mentioned missing the old printed Western News, where such items are found. The link to the current issues is provided and if you click on "All News" you will find over 860 of them dating back to 2008. Additional backfiles of the publication and the University of Western Ontario News and the Western Times are found on The Western News Archive.  (While I am at it, here is The Gazette.)

Post Script:

   On the website of the McIntosh Gallery you will also find a list of the publications produced and of the past exhibitions. A couple of years ago, I commented about one of them - "Lepidoptera in London." As a ""Bonus" I offered for us oldsters a guide related to gender terminology and lavatories. 

   Back in 2018 I wrote about a controversy involving The McIntosh in the early 1980s. See this post: Jasper Cropsey. Skip the long part about "The Chagall Conundrum" and go directly to "The Cropsey Controversy" where you will learn that the sale of this painting caused quite a ruckus. Let us hope that Western doesn't have to sell Brescia.

If you want to see the "Backwoods of America,"  you now have to go all the way to the backwoods of America in Arkansas and visit Crystal Bridges. I did, a few years back, see: "Amazing Accomplishments."