AGO - Maharaja Exhibit

The Art Gallery of Ontario is hoping that their new exhibit Maharajah: The Splendour of India's Royal Courts will be the next blockbuster to follow the great success of their King Tut exhibit from last year. An article I read in the Globe and Mail indicated that the AGO needed big showstoppers in order to make a profit. I had my doubts about how successful they would be when I read this, since it will be difficult to find continuously find shows with as much universal appeal as Tut seemed to generate. My visit to the AGO on December 30, which coincidentally was the exact same date the previous year that I went to see King Tut, seemed to prove that fact. Last year, timed tickets were required for Tut and when we arrived, there were lineups and huge crowds waiting to get in. Despite having the timed tickets, it was so packed that we had a hard time getting near the artifacts. This year for Maharajah, the lack of lineups and crowds were sadly and immediately apparent. Even the offer of allowing free entry to any visitor 25 and under (an attempt to introduce younger audiences to the AGO?) has not seemed to help.

This is really too bad since the Maharajah exhibit includes some spectacular pieces that are really worth seeing. The highlight is the beautiful saffron-coloured Rolls Royce nicknamed "The Star of India" which originally belonged to a Maharaja of Rajkot in 1934. Since then it has changed hands several times and has been ridden in by the British royalty. Recently it has been repurchased by the original Maharaja family and will be returning home to India after the exhibit.

Also of note is a stunning Fort Coach Company 1915 silver carriage with painted engravings of birds and flowers, carvings of bull dogs and ducks, and the Maharaja's coat of arms.

My personal favourites were the Art Deco furniture including a lovely library chair that had built in lights and ashtray on the arm, and a magnificent desk with built in lamp, desktop pen set, attached metal waste basket. Rich liked the Reverso watches where the watch-face could be flipped around so that cricket players could protect them from being scratched while playing their sport... we wondered why they just didn't take off the watches?

Art Gallery of Ontario Membership

Rich and I became members of the Art Gallery of Ontario at the end of last year since it seemed like the most economical way to see the King Tut exhibit. Having the membership allows us to drop in regularly for a few hours to see the new exhibits, without having to feel like we need to spend the entire day there to make the admission worthwhile. You also get 10% off at the gift shop, the Frank restaurant and the excellent cafeteria in the basement that serves the most delicious soups.

We've taken all the regular guided tours, such as the architectural tour of the newly renovated Frank Gehry design featuring the Galleria Italia, and the tour of the AGO's most prize possessions, highlighted by Ken Thompson's donation of Peter Paul Rubens masterpiece "Massacre of the Innocents" as well as an over-abundance of Krieghoff paintings which all start to look the same after wandering through 4 huge rooms full of them. There are also great "mini-tours" that focus on either the Canadian, African, European or Contemporary collections.

Taking a tour of the Contemporary collection (which changes quite frequently) is the most fun, since you have someone explain to you why you are admiring a pile of rocks or a totally black canvas with a single dot just off centre. We witnessed quite a surreal scene at our visit this weekend. There were a group of "paintings" by Agnes Martin on the wall, each one basically a white canvas with horizontal lines of varying thickness running across them. Seated in folding chairs were a group of art students(?) sketching these paintings. I stared at them, and then back at the paintings for a while wondering if I was missing something. Perhaps they saw something deeper and more meaningful that what I did? Perhaps the point was to imagine what could have been? I sneaked up to one of the sketchers and peeked over his shoulder at his pad, and there was a drawn a rectangle and some carefully shaded horizontal lines. I still don't get it...