#49 Go to the Art Gallery of Hamilton

As a museum studier and employee, I always feel guilty when someone mentions a local museum or art gallery that I haven’t actually bothered to visit...especially guilty when they bring up the Art Gallery of Hamilton, which had a fancy expensive reno a few years back and has been highly praised by artsies ever since.

fancypants! 

It’s hard for me to get super excited about most art galleries. I like my art pretty, famous, or so weird that I can laugh at it. Everything else just kind of confuses me, unless someone explains it – props to my fellow culture interpreters! We is kind, we is smart, we is important!  

So this week, I finally had a chance to visit the AGH, and I got paid to do it - our museum staff meeting was held at the gallery this month. It was a nice change of scene, and after the discussions and serious stuff, we took a guided tour of some of the galleries – during which I found that the AGH had all three categories of art I like!  

We saw two exhibitions – “The Eye of Napoleon,” which featured a large assortment of objects, clothing, paintings, furniture, etc. associated with Napoleon and his family, and “Alex Colville: Horse and Train.”

I really thought both were great, especially having the volunteer docent there to talk about specific pieces that I probably would have just glazed over otherwise. She even carried around an iPad to show us extra stuff. Cool use of interactives , AGH!

There were many pretty things – I think my favourite was one of the pieces of jewellery on display. It was all stunning, but there was this one bracelet, inlaid with something like 20 different kinds of gemstones. If you took the first letters of the names of the gemstones (like A for Amethyst, E for Emerald, etc.), they spelled out a message. I can’t remember what the message was but I believe it was a gift Napoleon gave to his second wife? Details, details. It was gorgeous and sparkly and that was all I really remembered.

As for famous, our docent introduced me to the Canadian painting ‘Horse and Train’ – which has been referenced countless times in pop culture, from a scene in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” to the cover of a Bruce Cockburn album. I liked it. We had a discussion about whether or not the horse would really smash into the train – “Is the train even moving?! Look at the steam, it’s just floating in the air! The train is obviously stopping at the signal light. No smashy.”  “No way. That horse has a one way ticket to glue town. That train is full speed ahead.”  

Alex Colville, "Horse and Train" 

The weirdest/funniest art I saw was a portrait of one of Napoleon’s kids as a baby. The artist had stylized the baby to make it look like one of those muscled, super babies you see in Renaissance art. I’ve seen that before - the weird thing that was the ultra-baby was posed, naked, reclining, and staring at the viewer in a really creepy, adult way. An attempt to make the future emperor seem regal even as a ugly, wrinkly little baby.   

None of these are the one I saw, but haha look at these ugly babies! 

In my attempt to find a similar painting as an example, I came across an entire tumblr all about this type of idealized infant in painting. It's called Ugly Renaissance Babies. Hilarious!