Honorary Doctorate Degree Program

Emily Carr University of Art + Design does not have a PhD program, but it does have an Honorary Doctorate Degree Program. This year, ECUAD is awarding Honorary Doctorates to an innovative artist, a generous gallerist and...the head of its capital campaign?

Field Guide

*
Flora verso, fauna recto
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines
Ding, ding, dong. Ding, ding, dong.

The Gallerist

When I was younger (in high school) we smoked a lot of pot and played a lot of board games. If the pot was strong, we would skip Risk for something light, like Masterpiece, which bills itself as "The Art Auction Game."

The Gallerist is a new art-themed board game that uses a number of different "actions" to accumulate points. As such, it has more in common with Risk than it does with Masterpiece.

Here is a "rules overview" of The Gallerist that concludes with the line "The player with the most money is declared the winner."

Ekwivalencies

Will I ever visit an art museum again and not hear someone suggest to someone else that Art and the Art World are synonymous, or are those days over? Is Contemporary Art now an atmosphere that exists independent of what we think of when we think of space and time? A Strictly Ballroom land mass, a Devil's Island of the mind?

"Again and again the same situation…"

During a recent walk through a large art museum I overheard a fifty-something woman tell her adult daughter that the Art World that administers Art -- that is Art -- is "sick. It's gross. It's just like high school."

Yes, the history of Art is full of cliques, movements and isms -- popular people and invisible people -- but divisions like these are endemic to any gathering, be it in politics or in economics, in churches or in moques.

But what if the Art World is high school, at least as middle-aged people remember high school? Are there equivalencies? Is it worth our while to go down that road?

In the high school that is the Art World, then, would the artists be the jocks?

 Would the curators be the cheerleaders?

And would the critics be the yearbook committee?

As for the gallerists, would they be the teachers?

 And the collectors -- would they be the substitute teachers?

When the Bag Breaks the Shoulder Gets a Rest (2011)

We knew that realtor and Xanadulian Bob Rennie was the bag man for the BC Liberal Party, but we did not know to what extent -- until yesterday's article in the Tyee.

Filters

The morning sun at this time of year through this kind of glass on a vase of white flowers.

"I find life…long"

In the film version of John Fowles's novel The Magus (1965), "Conchis" (Anthony Quinn) recites a poem for "Urfe" (Michael Caine) that he claims is from the T'ang Dynasty:

Here at the frontier there are falling leaves.
Although my neighbours are all barbarians, and you,
You are a thousand miles away,
There are always two cups on my table.

But no such poem exists -- at least not from that era. What does exist are a couple of poems that, when combined, might supply it.