Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum houses over 12,500 shoes and artefacts from around the world, including many shoes of notable people, including Marilyn Monroe, Margot Fonteyn, Margaret Atwood, the Dalai Lama, John Lenon, Madonna, and Shaquille O’Neal, whose legendary sneakers size 22 are on display in the permanent collection of the museum.
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Since November 3, 2012, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) presents BIG, a fashion installation in the Patricia Harris Gallery of Textiles & Costume on Level 4 in the
Museum’s Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. This exhibition is exclusively drawn from the ROM’s collection of nearly 50,000 textiles and costumes. Showcasing 40 artifacts from around the world, this unique exhibition includes objects assuming their BIG status in a myriad of ways. With some objects publicly displayed for the first time, the installation offers a fresh, new way of exploring the ROM’s renowned collections. BIG continues until Fall 2013.
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Bowie is… at the AGO in Toronto
This fall the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) offers North America its first chance to take an exciting odyssey through the world of David Bowie in the exhibition “David Bowie is,” created by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. Spanning five decades and featuring more than 300 objects from Bowie’s personal archive, the multi-media show exposes the ground-breaking artist’s collaborations in the fields of fashion, sound, theatre, art, and film. The exhibition opened on Sept. 25, 2013 and runs to Nov. 27, 2013.
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The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is currently hosting the Mesopotamia: Inventing Our World exhibition, designed by the British Museum and curated by ROM’s curator of World Cultures, Clemens Reichel together with Sarah Collins, Early Mesopotamia curator at the British Museum (on display until January 5, 2014).
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Denis Gagnon Interprets Alice in Toronto
Every age has to reinterpret its own myths anew, to re-infuse the classics with a contemporary flare and life, and to re-imagine its own heroes and heroines as contemporary. Baz Luhrmann did it with Romeo and Juliet (1996), Tim Burton with Alice in Wonderland (2010). Now Montréal’s most celebrated fashion designer Denis Gagnon is back with a tribute to the girl who takes on Wonderland and its classic absurdities, a girl who stands up to the Red Queen, tames Bandersnatch, rescues the Mad Hatter, and slays the Jabberwocky.
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A few weeks ago I was in Toronto and had the pleasure to attend a lecture by Susan Buck-Morss, Professor of Political Philosophy and Social Theory at Cornell University, entitled “Inheriting Culture: History in a Communist Mode“at Ryerson University. It was the second time I got to hear Susan Buck-Morss speak in Toronto (the first time was her talk “Global Imagination Against Global Power” at York University in 2004).
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Toronto Cafés, Pubs, and Restaurants
I’ve lived in Toronto for a year when I did my Masters, and now I go there at least once a year. It is always a pleasure to visit old favorite places and discover new ones. Friends always take me to amazing places, and I thought I will share the culinary wisdom.
Kat Sark
Suites Culturelles 