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AGW Wins Two Provincial Awards at the 36th OAAG Awards

Toronto, September 27, 2013 -- The Art Gallery of Windsor wins two major awards at the 36th annual OAAG (Ontario Association of Art Galleries) Awards that took place in Toronto last week. The AGW took home the prestigious 2013 Exhibition of the Year Award for Border Cultures: Part One (homes, land), and the Art Writing Award for the Jesse Birch essay "Common Gravity: Kika Thorne's Tension Sculptures" which accompanies the publication Kika Thorne: The WILDcraft.

"We are very pleased to have our programming excellence recognized by our peers so soon into the Gallery's recent restructuring under the administrative and programmatic leadership of AGW Director Dr. Catharine Mastin," notes AGW President Sean White. "These awards bring the Gallery back onto an important provincial podium which it occupied regularly during the mid-1990s, when the AGW won awards in Curatorial Writing, Publication Design and Education. The Gallery's Board of Directors is confident at that this is the beginning of a renewed track dedicated to organizing top quality projects for this region to enjoy and to repositioning the Gallery as a centre for curatorial and publishing excellence."

The AGW congratulates and recognizes the important contributions by the Curator of Contemporary Art, Srimoyee Mitra, who curated and organized both the Border Cultures: Part One (homes, land) and Kika Thorne exhibitions. We also thank all the artists participating in the exhibitions whose contributions to visual culture enable the AGW frame these important social and artistic discussions. Participating artists include: Broken City Lab (Canada); Campus in Camps (Palestine); Iftikhar and Elizabeth Dadi (USA); Willie Doherty (Ireland); Marcos Ramirez Erre (Mexico/USA); Sanaz Mazinani (Canada); Christopher McNamara (Canada/USA); Dylan Miner (USA/Canada); Ed Pien (Canada); Leila Sujir and Maria Lantin (Canada). Border Cultures brought together artists from the region and around the globe, and Thorne's exhibition and publication profiled an important mid-career artist from Canada.

The Gallery's stakeholders, from governance to staff and members, are invaluable for their support in making it possible to realize consequential and award-winning projects. Finally, we thank the financial contributions of our granting supporters at the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts for their steadfast commitment to the AGW and the Ontario Association of Art Galleries for maintaining their commitment to recognizing annually the important work being done across the province in developing visual literacy among the citizens of Ontario.

For further information, please contact Catharine Mastin, AGW Director, at cmastin@agw.ca or 519-977-0013 ext 135.