Orillia Museum of Art & History
30 Peter St. South L3V 5A9 Orillia, ON, Canada

Happy #InternationlMuseumDay! #IMD2021 #TheFutureOfMuseums #ONMuseumMonth #omah #omahfromhome This year's theme is The Future of Museums: Recover and Reimagine. CELEBRATE!

Have your say on the future of public art in Orillia. The City of Orillia, through its Art in Public Places Committee, and the Orillia Museum of Art & History will be consulting with the public to draft a plan for public art in Orillia and provide a vision for temporary and permanent art installations in the city. Click here to take part in our public survey: https://forms.gle/YG12Li1XGj7b2qo87

Enjoy a chocolate mousse created by The Common Stove while you consider bidding on a moose or at least a piece of moose artwork -- at OMAH's Spring Back virtual auction featuring paintings and prints by our friend Charles Pachter. Dessert and drinks kits from The Common Stove an event partner in this special event -- will be available to order starting June 1. Funds raised will go to OMAH's programming and our fund for long-term sustainability. Over the next two weeks, we'll be sharing more details of this unique event, also sponsored by HGR Graham Partners LLP. Stay tuned.

Visit https://orilliamuseumofartandhistory.ticketing.veevartapp.c to book your tour! #omah #orilliamuseum #ONMuseumMonth #orillia #omahfromhome

Join us virtually on Thursday, May 27, from 7 to 8 p.m. for the opening of two new exhibitions. They are Jill Price's Unfurled: Unsettling the Archive From a More-Than-Human Perspective, and Will McGarvey’s Sticks and Stones. At the event, moderated by Arts Programming Coordinator Tanya Cunnington, both artists will give a short slideshow and talk followed by a Q&A session. Registration for this event is free through our website. Shown here is Face Setting 2021 by Price. So put your feet up, grab a glass of your favourite beverage and join us for a fun and informative evening!

This is Sunnyside Beach by Denesee Paul, one of more than 70 works in the Carmichael Canadian Landscape Exhibition: Tradition Transformed.

History Mystery Monday: Why call it Mount Slaven? What was the connection between John Wallace Slaven an Orillia druggist who later became a justice of the peace for Simcoe County around 1880 and the former Mount Slaven Public School? It’s all a bit of a mystery. The Slavens were buried in the Old Catholic Cemetery on Coldwater Road, about 750 metres from the corner of Mary Street and Westmount Drive, where the school was located in the west end of town. However, that see...ms to be simply coincidental. Furthermore, the Slavens lived at 80 Neywash and 93 Tecumseth streets, and there is no record that they lived anywhere in the west end. However, in 1890, John W. Slaven and John McCosh donated land for the construction of the South Orillia School Section 14, a one-room building at Mary Street/Westmount Drive location. John was mayor about that time and may have been a school trustee as well. Some time later, a two-storey brick building on the same site became the Mount Slaven Public School. But why did it get that name instead of, for instance, Westmount School? John died in 1906 and the name change might have been a memorial for him. As we’ve said, it’s a bit of a mystery. If you can shed any light on this, please leave a comment below. This is the final installment of a four-part series on the Slaven family brought to you by Fred Blair, a family historian and OMAH volunteer.

OMAH's quarARTine: Isolation Creation continues. From now until the conclusion of the auction, 15 new works will be added every 10 days. To view the catalogue, click here: https://event.auctria.com//a780d600ec2e11e9ae081db830846aa5 See something you like? To register to bid, click here: https://event.auctria.com//17e79e00ef7811e9a6d4d9143a192aa8... Bidding starts at $15 per item. Most works have a reserve of $30. Some that are framed or are in a larger format have a slightly higher reserve. Bidding on the 13th round opens Saturday, Jan. 9, at 11 a.m. This round will close on Monday, Jan. 18, at 8 a.m.

It’s From The Vault Friday! Today, we offer you a painting shrouded in mystery. Maud Lewis was a Canadian folk artist renowned for her colourful paintings of Nova Scotia landscapes. She suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, which limited the use of her hands in later life. As Maud’s paintings gained popularity, her condition deteriorated. Her husband, Everett, used cardboard cutouts of recurring themes in her paintings to use as stencils to... help Maud keep up with the growing demand. When Maud died in 1970, Everett continued to use the stencils to assist in his own artworks. The painting featured this week is signed by Everett Lewis in the bottom left corner. However, Maud’s signature can be seen in the bottom right corner, although it has been painted over. In later life, Everett was known to both erase Maud’s signature and claim her work as his own, as well as forge her signature to receive more money for his paintings. Do you think this is an authentic Maud Lewis or a forgery by Everett? See more

Somewhere between abstraction and reality lies an ongoing series titled Meditations on Landscape. In this piece, the suggestion of architecture within landscape is evoked through the chance and random texture, shapes and colours in the fragments that remain after the years of use and subsequent abandonment of old books. I dreamt I was a landscape (Meditations on Landscape Series IV #9), a book assemblage by Winnipeg based artist Deborah Danelley, is one of over 70 works in the Carmichael Canadian Landscape Exhibition: Tradition Transformed.

We are excited to bring you a new component to the Orillia Regional Arts & Heritage Awards. As part of our transition online, we look forward to featuring each of the 20 nominees over the coming weeks. Each day will spotlight a new individual from each category as we build anticipation for the awards ceremony on November 25. With that, let us introduce our fifteenth nominee... And the nominee is....for the Orillia Regional Arts and Heritage (ORAH) Heritage: Restoration, Renov...ation and Publication Award...Sarah Pickard and the Sawbones Society. In 2019, Sarah Pickard and members of the Sawbones Society developed historical guided walking tours as part of the Coldwater Steampunk Festival programming. Pivoting in 2020, Sarah, with the support of the board of directors of the Coldwater Canadiana Heritage Museum created a TV series based on these tours and the artifacts at the museum that can be viewed on the Coldwater Steampunk Festival YouTube channel. Sarah and the Sawbones Society have created a unique experience and made history relevant to their generation. Congratulations Sarah on your nomination! This year’s winners will be announced on OMAH's YouTube channel on Wednesday, November 25 starting at 7pm. The awards are supported by Accutrac Capital Solutions and the City of Orillia’s Community Services Department, Orillia and District Arts Council (ODAC) and Orillia Museum of Art & History (OMAH).

The Hirsute Hunks series we launched in the spring is back this month to honour Movember. This photograph from the OMAH collection (2000.21.21) was taken by Orillia portrait photographer Frank B. Stewart. It shows Arthur Boyd Thompson who practised law in Orillia for 50 years.

Woodland Improvisation is part of a series of watercolour and ink paintings that was started this spring. This series of paintings features intimate impressions of the landscape near North Bay. Using black ink, Claire Domitric follows the lines of the landscape, meandering here and there, focusing on creating a sense of place. This painting is one of over 70 works on view in this year's Carmichael Canadian Landscape Exhibition: Tradition Transformed.

Gobble Gobble. Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving with these clippings from the Oct. 11, 1963, issue of the Orillia Packet and Times from the OMAH files (2001.10.514).

OMAH awards season wraps up with the news that the Quarrington Multidisciplinary Arts Award has been given to painter, storyteller, photographer and mixed-media artist Laurie O’Reilly for her sculpture Overexposed. The award is named in honour of Paul Quarrington, the novelist, playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, musician and educator who died in 2010. It is given to an artist incorporating at least two mediums into a work exhibited in the Carmichael Canadian Landscape Exhib...ition: Tradition Transformed. Laurie O’Reilly looks at humans in the role of keepers of the Earth and their overexposure to socio-technological constructs. Some of her pieces speak to our isolation from nature, our needs and the meaning and importance of being engaged with our natural environment. The exhibition jurors enjoyed the multiple meanings and dichotomies in her work, such as human vs nature and human vs technology. They felt her materials were intriguing and enjoyed the movement within the composition. This award is financed by the Paul Quarrington Legacy Fund, which honours contributions to the arts. Its funds are disbursed to OMAH and the Mariposa Folk Festival. See more

The simplicity of Caleb Butler's On Hold offers a stillness that is palpable, represented via the earth, sky and humankind’s existence between these two elements that at present, is on hold. The sense of remoteness and quiet reflects the context of a global pandemic that requires us to reconsider physical separation from one another while forcing some to comprehend what it means to be alone. Caleb’s mixed British-Caribbean heritage, academic training and travel across Southeast Asia, North America, Europe and the Caribbean has fostered his interest in the way people live. He therefore aims to document how people interact with each other and their world. On Hold is one of over 70 works of art on view in OMAH's Carmichael Canadian Landscape Exhibition: Tradition Transformed.

This photograph shows the Shangri-La Garden restaurant circa 1960. The Shang, as it was affectionately known, served both light lunches and full-course meals such as steak and chicken plus a variety of Chinese food. It was at the downtown location now occupied by Brewery Bay.

Hurry Hard! Age doesn't matter when it comes to curling. In 2011, Les Girard, aged 94, continued to play his favourite sport. In the 1940s, when Les started playing, the Orillia Curling Club was located on Andrew Street. In 1956, it moved to West Street, which had eight sheets for play. Pictured is Les on the sheet at Barnfield Point Recreation Centre and his sweater proudly displaying his badges.

OPENING TODAY: The 19th annual Carmichael Canadian Landscape Exhibition: Tradition Transformed. Some of the artists will be joining us between noon and 3 p.m. Due to COVID restrictions, we are limiting entry to 20 people every half hour starting at noon. Please call or email to book your time. This exhibition showcases 75 contemporary landscapes. As a special complement to the exhibition, Old Barns, Miner's Bay by Franklin Carmichael, a painting OMAH hopes to acquire for ...its permanent collection, has been included with this exhibition. Award recipients will be announced during the exhibition and on social media this week. RE-OPENING TODAY: She Shoots, She Scores!, an exhibition developed with resources from the Hockey Hall of Fame, explores the history and legacy of women’s hockey as well as highlighting women who have broken down barriers in a sport that has long been dominated by men. This exhibition is generously supported by Heritage Canada and community sponsors Tryon Construction, Orillia Glass and Mirror, Mariposa Landscaping, and Stephen Fagan Medicine Professional Corporation. See more

Awards season continues at OMAH with the announcement of the Carmichael Canadian Landscape Exhibition: Tradition Transformed Jurors' Prize. The Jurors’ Prize is awarded to an artist who best exemplifies the qualities that Franklin Carmichael found ideal -- that is, incorporating diversity in their work and remaining sophisticated in their depictions of the various landscapes in our geography. The recipient of this award should visibly be embracing, challenging or addressing e...xisting approaches to Canadian landscapes. This year’s Jurors’ Prize recipient is Janet Read for High Arctic: dark horizon #1. Janet Read is a painter, musician and poet who grew up near the shores of Lake Simcoe The artist has sought the water’s edge ever since. Read was born and educated in Toronto. Her settler roots go back to the Ottawa Valley via Belfast and County Wexford in Ireland. Perhaps this explains a fondness for fiddle music, poetry and the sea. The jurors found this piece to be very meditative and they enjoyed the simplicity of the marks on paper that still maintained a hint of the landscape with the horizon line. See more

Here’s our second historical picture of Carter’s restaurant. Archie Carter purchased Lil Harry Ice Cream Store at 71-73 Mississaga Street East in 1907, and the family business evolved into Carter's Restaurant in 1924, offering full-course dinners, a coffee shop, ice cream and confections. On June 21, 1961, Carter’s Restaurant was destroyed by a fire that was deemed to be arson. The Carter family opened a new location on Highway 11 and Laclie Street, calling it the Sundial Dining Room. The restaurant featured a large sundial that could be seen from the highway, a beacon for both tourists and locals.

Restaurants on Mississaga Street East have always been part of the fabric of the downtown core. In the first half of the 20th century, the strip was dominated by family-run restaurants such as Carter’s. In this 1948 photo there are signs on the diner’s wall offering ham sandwiches for 30 cents and cherry pie for 10 cents. In 1961, Carter’s Restaurant was destroyed by fire (adjudged to have been arson) and reopened at Highway 11 and Laclie Street as the Sundial Dining Room. The building featured a large sundial that could be seen from the highway.

Hurry Hard! This is the Orillia team that won the 1943 Governor-General's Trophy for curling. The trophy is an interprovincial double-rink men's competition, played since 1874. From the OMAH collection (1998.2.26).

The OMAH installation team working on the Carmichael landscape exhibit uncrates ... Cracked Pipe, a sculptural work by Alberta based artist Jude Griebel. Jude's work explores human impact on the world by merging anatomies and landscapes into single sculptural forms. Jude's sculpture is one of 75 works of art selected for this year's Carmichael Canadian Landscape Exhibition: Tradition Transformed. The exhibit runs from October 3 to January 17.

We are thrilled to have started our fall programming - with extra health and safety precautions in place. Our studio has ample room to be socially distant while participating in our classes. We still have spots available for tomorrow's OMAH Engage: Arthur Shilling Style Self-Portraits. The program runs from 10 AM - 12 PM and the cost is $20 +HST for members and $25 + HST for guests. If you're interested, send an email to [email protected] or call (705) 326-2159.

Fall on Nottawasaga Street. This black-and-white postcard from 1909 was originally in the collection of the Toronto Postcard Club but is now part of the OMAH archives (2007.61.40).

It's awards season at OMAH. The Kevin J. Batchelor Emerging Artist Award is given to an artist working in either painting, drawing or mixed media who has a work in the Carmichael Canadian Landscape Exhibition: Tradition Transformed. This year's recipient is Bethany LeBlonc from Peterborough. Since graduating from the Haliburton School of Art & Design, she has been working on a series of paintings representing the obsolete and the underutilized. She is drawn to creating paint...ings of local spaces while in a stage of progress or change. This award was graciously established and funded by the Batchelor family of Orillia upon the passing of arts advocate, local music teacher and artist Kevin J. Batchelor. The Batchelor family remarked on Bethany's work, Landscape Interrupted, saying it forces contemplation of the mundane around us and is uncomfortable as it causes us to recognize how time passes and yet some things stay the same. See more

This image, shared by local historian Marcel Rousseau, is from the 1925 Orillia Collegiate Institute (OCI) yearbook. The team won the district championship in their first year of competition, playing against town teams that included The Ontario Hospital, The Business Girls and The Teachers. J. Trill, seated in the front row, second from the left, is Gordon Lightfoot’s mother. Meanwhile, She Shoots! She Scores!, OMAH's landmark exhibition on the history of women's hockey, reopens on Oct. 3.

Today is the final day of the exhibition Hunter Games, featuring the work of Sadko Hadzihasanovic, which opened on July 10. In this special OMAH video, Sadko talks about the piece entitled Lesson #1.

Fall has arrived, and to honour this season of change, we are sharing a detail from E. Conyers Barker’s painting, Fall Landscape with Fence, which he painted when he was 20. E. Conyers Barker (1909-2003) was a friend of Franklin Carmichael and of the Group of Seven. This painting is in the OMAH Collection (1981.1.1).

In 2009, regional historian Lynda Whiston wrote that celebrated turn-of-the-century Orillia athlete Walter Knox hustled his talents to garner hefty bets on his athletic abilities, gambling and winning his way to fame far and wide. Knox, pictured on the left beside competitor Big Hamilton, was short and weighed barely 150 pounds, but word of his astonishing ability to win races and compete in the shot-put, high jump, broad jump and pole vault soon spread. His talents were so remarkable that he often used aliases to enter races because challengers were reluctant to take him on. Also, had gamblers known who he was, they might not have been so willing to part with their money. Learn more about Walter Knox in our upcoming exhibition on Sports in Orillia which opens in October. This photograph (2009.56.22) is from the OMAH collection.

Bid now, bid often, bid high on OMAH's quarARTine virtual fundraiser. Twenty works of art created by our talented local and regional artists are posted online every 20 days. Bidding on the current 20 closes on Friday, Sept. 25, at 8 a.m. Previews of the next 20 are now available and bidding begins on Sept. 25 at 11 a.m. Visit: https://event.auctria.com/405e0a35-6eb7-4e0d-b8ff-c900ecda/ to view the art in the catalogue. See something you like, register to bid on the same website.

In this OMAH video, artist Sadko Hadzihasanovic talks about his painting Banquet on River. Sadko’s exhibition Hunter Games continues at OMAH until Sept. 27. OMAH is now open Tuesday to Saturday, noon to 3 p.m. Admission is $5 or free with an OMAH membership.

Orillia photographer B. Frank Stewart took this portrait of J.P. Secord, who was a member of Orillia Town Council and instrumental in the creation of the first hospital in Orillia. The Red Cross Hospital, which opened in 1889, later became the Orchard Point Inn. He was also a prominent realtor. In 1908, an entry in the Barrie Northern Advance newspaper said of him: His connections are of a most superior character, while the facilities for transacting business are unusually complete, enabling him to offer special advantages to customers. This photograph is from the Charles Harold Hale Collection at OMAH (2000.21.34).