Events, talks and tours

Curators in Conversation: Sandrine Colard with Julie Crooks

Join Sandrine Colard, guest curator of The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture, and Julie Crooks, Associate Curator at the AGO, for a conversation about the making of the RIC exhibition, which celebrates the viewpoints of women in African photography from the nineteenth-century to today.

Please arrive early, as seating is provided on a first-come, first-served basis.

Lodestar: Phil Solomon, in Memoriam

Co-presented by Ad Hoc (Experimental Film Collective) and the Ryerson Image Centre

An elegy and celebration of the life and work of extraordinary experimental filmmaker and masterful optical printer Philip Stewart Solomon (1954-2019), this free program brings together films that were made as gifts by and for Solomon over the last twenty years, and films that he especially treasured.

Special Tour of The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture

Join Gaëlle Morel, RIC Exhibitions Curator, and Marieme Lo, Associate Professor in Women and Gender Studies & Director of the African Studies Program at the University of Toronto, for a special behind-the-scenes tour of The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture.

Noon Time Collection Talk with Philippe Depairon

Bombs, Beaches, Bunkers: Looking at Life in a Nuclear Mode, 1945–1990 

Looking at photographs from the Black Star Collection of photojournalism, this talk by Philippe Depairon, recipient of the RIC’s 2018 Howard Tanenbaum Research Fellowship, will examine the evolution of nuclear iconography between 1945 and 1990. Beginning with the nuclear tests undertaken at the Bikini Atolls and on Indigenous soil in Nevada, we will see how pictures of the iconic and infamous nuclear mushroom reached their apogee in the 1960s before atomic bomb testing became illegal, therefore rendering nuclear energy invisible. The talk will likewise discuss the attempts of various photographers to make the atomic complex and its potential consequences visible again.

Opening Party for Grayson James: After Alexandria

Join us for a party to celebrate the opening of Grayson James: After Alexandria in our Student Gallery.

Special Tour of The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture

Join Gaëlle Morel, RIC Exhibitions Curator, and Michèle Pearson Clarke, Photo Laureate for the City of Toronto, for a special behind-the-scenes tour of The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture.

After Alexandria: Exhibition Tour and Drop-in Workshop

Join Grayson James for a tour of After Alexandria, starting at 12:15 pm. He will present a brief (15 minute) talk on the project, outlining the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that brought him to the work. Afterwards, viewers are invited to join him as he works on the participatory aspect of this project, reading, intervening in, and documenting the texts in the space.

Noon Time Collection Talk with Ingrid Mida

Boys in Dresses and Other Fashions of the Victorian Age

Join Dr. Ingrid Mida, author of The Dress Detective, for a talk about Victorian fashions as seen in selected images from the RIC collection. Not long after photography’s invention, the medium allowed families and individuals to stop time, preserving the reflected light of their image for generations to come, and these photographs are embedded with clues related to codes of dress and behaviour that mark them as mirrors of their age. This talk will examine the nuances of late nineteenth-century fashions and give special emphasis to photographs of boys wearing dresses, a little-known facet of Victorian dress codes for children.

Tanenbaum Lecture with Syrus Marcus Ware

Join Toronto-based artist Syrus Marcus Ware for a talk about his work, presented in conjunction with Ancestors, Can You Read Us? (Dispatches From The Future). A core team member of Black Lives Matter Toronto, Ware was the 2012 recipient of the Steinert and Ferreiro Award for LGBTQ+ community leadership and activism, the largest award of its kind in Canada.

Please arrive early, as seating is provided on a first-come, first-served basis.

After Alexandria: Exhibition Tour and Drop-in Workshop

Join Grayson James for a tour of After Alexandria, starting at 12:15 pm. He will present a brief (15 minute) talk on the project, outlining the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that brought him to the work. Afterwards, viewers are invited to join him as he works on the participatory aspect of this project, reading, intervening in, and documenting the texts in the space.

Special Tour of The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture

Join Gaëlle Morel, RIC Exhibitions Curator, and Kenneth Montague, Founding Director of Wedge Curatorial Projects and The Wedge Collection, for a special behind-the-scenes tour of The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture.

Artist Talk with Grayson James 

Why I'm a Socialist 

Join Grayson James for an artist talk, where he will discuss how he came to socialist politics, why he thinks they are the correct response to the crises we are experiencing in the world, and how they relate to After Alexandria.