On Friday, June 24th, the Art Museum will host "Building Museums: Building Cities (Part 2)," a panel discussion featuring Adrian Blackwell (MUD 2002), Shirley Blumberg (BArch 1976), Associate Professor Barbara Fischer, and Dean Richard Sommer.

The event builds on a previous discussion that considered Toronto’s recent cultural building revival, the surge of large capital projects, and the renewals of museum spaces currently developing across Canada. The follow up event will focus more critically on the nature of museum architecture in the context of international development. The Daniels Faculty members will be joined by French architect Eric Lapierre, Charles Renfro of New York-based Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Paris-based writer and critic Philippe Trétiack.

From the University of Toronto Art Centre website:

"The discussion will centre on recent museum architecture in the context of the paradigmatic transformations of ideas of the museum’s role in the larger culture. Taking as their point of departure recent examples in Canada, the US and France, the panelists will examine the tendency toward spectacular architecture and its role in urban renewal and gentrification, but also the transformation of the idea of the museum space—from a hallowed, quasi-religious and authoritarian space to one increasingly focused on the notion of the emancipated audience, broader visitor engagement, the purpose of social gatherings, as a laboratory of ideas, and/or space of affective, immersive experience."

The discussion will take place in the Debates Room of the Hart House, and will start at 3:00 PM on Friday, June 24^th.

For more information, visit the Art Museum's website.