UNews - Dr. Josephine Mills

Largest gift of cultural properties in ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge history given by Dr. Margaret (Marmie) Perkins Hess

caroline.zentner — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 16:29:46 +0000

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Gallery today unveils an unparalleled bequest of more than 1,000 works of art valued between $4 and $5 million from the estate of Dr. Margaret (Marmie) Perkins Hess (DFA ’04).

“This is the largest gift of art and cultural properties to the U of L in its 51-year history,” says Dr. Mike Mahon, U of L president and vice-chancellor. “We are honoured to become the home for these iconic works of art. Marmie was truly a renaissance woman; she was highly educated and committed to the arts, education and the community.”

The diverse collection is like a hidden treasure — most of the works haven’t been seen in public since Hess acquired them, including Cliffs Near Petawawa by Tom Thomson, a contemporary of the Group of Seven. It alone is valued at more than $1 million. The collection also contains more than 400 works by Indigenous artists, primarily Inuit and Northwest Coast First Nations.

“It was important to Marmie that her collection be open and accessible to the broadest audiences possible and also be used to support education, teaching and research. Given these wishes, we find it so satisfying that the Hess collection has found a new home at the U of L,” say Dale Boniface and Richard Haskayne, co-executors of the Hess estate. “Recognized nationally for the quality of its art collection and the standard of care and stewardship it provides to the collection, we take great comfort in knowing that Marmie would be absolutely thrilled with the new home and plans for her collection.”

Cliffs near Petawawa, Tom Thomson

Together, these works help tell the story of Canadian art in the 20th century from both settler and Indigenous perspectives. A.Y. Jackson, a member of the Group of Seven and a personal friend, advised Hess on her Canadian art purchases, which include works by Lawren Harris and Emily Carr. Another friend, the late photographer Roloff Beny, advised Hess on her purchases of international art, which include artists such as Picasso and Chagall.

“Marmie had a really good eye and she was ahead of her time with her strong interest in learning from Indigenous people and their art,” says Dr. Josephine Mills, U of L Art Gallery director and curator and Fine Arts professor. “This collection is an amazing addition for us.”

The U of L Art Gallery, in addition to renaming the main gallery space as the Dr. Margaret (Marmie) Perkins Hess Gallery, will focus on researching the works and providing access to them through exhibitions and public programs.

“The U of L Art Gallery is the perfect home for this gift because of our emphasis on creating in-depth engagement for students, scholars and the public,” says Mills.

Dr. Margaret (Marmie) Perkins Hess (DFA '04). Photo courtesy of The Alberta Order of Excellence.

Margaret (Marmie) Perkins Hess, a community leader, internationally recognized art historian and lecturer, businesswoman, rancher and philanthropist, was born in Calgary on May 3, 1916, an only child whose father was president of the Revelstoke Sawmill Company. She attended high school in Calgary and began her post-secondary education at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta in 1934. Hess completed a Bachelor of Arts at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Toronto in 1938 and post-graduate studies at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Iowa in 1947. During her time in Toronto, she met several members of the Group of Seven and they encouraged her love of art.

During the Second World War, she returned to Alberta to teach art history at what are now the Alberta College of Art and Design and the Banff Centre, replacing male instructors who had enlisted. When she lived in Banff, she hosted parties that were attended by the likes of A.Y. Jackson and Lawren Harris. Hess may have met the renowned Canadian photographer, Roloff Beny, during this time. They became lifelong friends and, following Beny’s death in 1984, Hess served on an advisory committee to his estate that determined his collection should come to the U of L.

In the 1950s, Hess travelled extensively in the Canadian north. These journeys, and later visits to the West Coast, inspired her love of Indigenous art. In 1970, Hess opened Calgary Galleries Ltd., which was one of the first galleries in Canada to showcase Indigenous art. Recognized as a world authority on Inuit and First Nations art, she willingly shared her knowledge with students and scholars.

Hess was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1993 for her research, writing, exhibitions and lectures on Canadian Indigenous art. She also received many other awards, including the Alberta Order of Excellence and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal. In 2004, the U of L awarded Hess with an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, one of several honorary degrees she received from universities.

Generous with her time and expertise, Hess supported students through scholarship and endowment funds and she volunteered on many community organizations, including the U of L Senate and the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede. She was appointed by then-premier Peter Lougheed to the Kananaskis Citizens Advisory Committee tasked with developing a provincial park for the 1988 Winter Olympics. Hess was given an honorary membership in the Ranchmen’s Club long before the organization officially allowed women to join in the early 1990s.

Hess passed away on Sept. 2, 2016 at 100 years of age.

Social Justice Symposium to touch on democracy, art, environment and more

caroline.zentner — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 16:29:18 +0000

The School of Liberal Education at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge is hosting a Social Justice Symposium to bring together interested students, faculty, staff and community members for an afternoon of talks devoted to various aspects of social justice.

The symposium begins at noon on Friday, Sept. 22 in the Markin Hall Atrium with a keynote talk by Dr. Bryan Kolb, a U of L neuroscientist, titled Brain Development: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. His hour-long talk is followed by three blocks of 10-minute talks by U of L faculty members.

The first block starts at 1:20 p.m. and includes Dr. Harold Jansen (Political Science)—Education for Democracy; Paula Cardozo (Library)—Libraries for Social Justice;Dr. Josephine Mills (Fine Arts/Art Gallery)—Art and Activism.

The second block begins at 2:20 p.m. with Don McIntyre (Management)—The TRC; Dr. Jan Newberry (Anthropology)—Raising Spirit; and Dr. Tom Johnston (Geography)—Two Geographical Perspectives on Justice.

The third and final block begins at 3:20 p.m. with Dr. Anne Dymond (Fine Arts)—U of L’s Refugee Work; Dr. Maura Hanrahan (Native American Studies)—FNMI Issues in the Academy; and Dr. Cheryl Currie (Health Sciences)—Understanding the Social in Epidemiology.

The symposium provides plenty of time for discussion to spark a community-wide conversation. In addition, a booth fair will feature representatives from various campus and community groups interested in social justice.

Please RSVP at http://teachingcentre.anyvite.com/vvegbzngm8.

Grant enables U of L researchers to investigate how people engage with art

caroline.zentner — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 20:58:10 +0000

Intuitively, Dr. Josephine Mills, curator of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Art Gallery, knows people get something out of art. Exactly how people engage with art remains a mystery even though art galleries, large and small, have a big interest in being able to answer the question.

“Public engagement in the arts is a huge topic right now, particularly for the Canada Council for the Arts and other funding bodies and boards of free-standing art galleries. Within universities, it’s often phrased as academic engagement,” says Mills. “There’s this pressure to do lots of public engagement but there’s really no sense of how you would know when it’s successful.”

The question of how public engagement in the arts can be measured is perfect fodder for the Level 2: Lichen Lab interdisciplinary research group at the U of L. The team consists of Mills; Dr. Louise Barrett, Canada Research Chair in Cognition, Evolution and Behaviour; Christine Clark (MFA ’14), assistant professor in the Department of New Media; Donald Lawrence, a professor in the Faculty of Arts at Thompson Rivers ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ; Dr. Tiffany Muller Myrdahl, senior lecturer in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ; and doctoral students Miranda Lucas, Leila Armstrong and Maria Madacky. It hopes to shed some light on public engagement thanks to $48,000 in funding from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Connection (SSHRC) Grant.

U of L Lichen Lab members include, from left to right, Leila Armstrong, Maria Madacky, Dr. Louise Barrett, Christine Clark and Dr. Josephine Mills.

Previous research studies have focused on museums in large cities and most measures of audience engagement are based on assessing the performing arts where attendance numbers are easy to capture. People who visit an art gallery exhibit can provide anecdotes about their experience but there’s often a difference between what people say and what they do.

“Can you measure their behaviour and get some sense of what people are experiencing and getting out of an exhibition without having to ask them?” says Barrett.

To answer that question, Barrett and Lucas, recipient of a SSHRC graduate scholarship, thought techniques used to study the behaviour of vervet monkeys could be adapted to studying the behaviour of people at an art exhibit. In her study, Lucas set up small video cameras in four art galleries and recorded people’s behaviours, supplemented with her own notations. Lucas measured details like how close people went to an artwork, how long they stood in front of it, how much they moved around and whether they spoke to someone. The data has not yet been analyzed but Lucas will be looking for common factors in people’s behaviours.

To build on Lucas’s work, Mills and Barrett have devised a project called You are Here. The project will bring together artists with an interest in activism and audience engagement, ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, art gallery professionals and students for a three-day workshop dedicated to developing the understanding of public engagement in art galleries on both practical and philosophical levels. Philosophically, Dr. Alva Noë’s (��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of California Berkeley) theory that art is a ‘strange tool’—a means to reorganize, reflect on and understand human behaviour—will be used to connect the behavioural studies of gallery engagement with the artists’ practices and the forms of art they produce.

“Can we look at art as something that’s a way of extending our mind into the world and use it as a tool for understanding ourselves and others?” says Barrett. “If we can understand more about how people engage actively with art, artists can use that knowledge to elicit particular responses and alter viewers’ perceptions. As the artists we work with are also activists, they are keen to incorporate such ideas into their practice.”

In conjunction with the workshop, and a related series of exhibitions at the U of L Art Gallery in the fall of 2017, Clark will be involved in the knowledge mobilization component of the project, facilitating the creation of podcasts and a video miniseries which will be hosted on a dedicated website.

“I’ll be helping with concept development and production of the podcasts, editing alongside the others, and overseeing a student to create the website that will host the podcasts and videos and other information to extend the material that people will have access to,” says Clark.

The project will contribute to research and teaching in museum studies, visual art and the field of cognition, as well as inform art gallery professionals.

UNews - Dr. Josephine Mills

Largest gift of cultural properties in ��Ѹ�����Դ���߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge history given by Dr. Margaret (Marmie) Perkins Hess

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