Curator’s Tour of the Maud Lewis Exhibition by Danielle Siemens

Join us for a curator’s tour by Danielle Siemens Collections Manager/Curatorial Associate at the AGA of the exhibition Maud Lewis on March 26th at 2pm. Siemens will lead you through the exhibition while speaking to Maud Lewis' life and how she became one of Canada’s most celebrated folk artists. 

You can participate in this hour-long program both in-person and online through watching our Zoom livestream. Due to popularity of this program registration is required in advance. We will keep a small number of tickets available at the door as well. This curator’s talk is included in the price of general admission to the gallery or free for members. The livestream of the artist talk is free and will require advance registration as well. After the curator’s talk there will be time for a live Q&A with the audience. 

About the exhibition

One of Canada’s most beloved folk artists, Maud Lewis (1903–1970) was famous in her lifetime for her brightly coloured and endearing paintings of rural Nova Scotia. Working from her cabin on the side of the highway in Marshalltown, in Digby County, she produced hundreds of small works that captured aspects of country life that were rapidly changing. 

Until now, the story of her difficult life has dominated the discussion of her art: her triumph over her physical disabilities and poverty, the harsh treatment she received at the hands of her family, and her alliance by chance with her husband Everett Lewis, who enabled her successful painting career over many decades. This show, however, will stress the aesthetic aspect of Maud Lewis’s achievement, looking carefully at her serial repetition of images and motifs across her career, and the dizzying variety that she brings to the problem of picture-making. From her black cats and kittens to her cart horses and oxen hauling logs, to her quayside scenes of ships in port and the Maritime landscape in all seasons, Maud Lewis made paintings that still delight in their optimism and buoyant vitality.

#AGALive is made possible by Canada Council for the Arts.