Spring Exhibitions

Holding Patterns: the short view

Recent Acquisitions from the McIntosh Gallery Collection

Angela Grauerholz, Meryl McMaster, and Soheila Esfahani

April 5 – July 11, 2025

Curated by Rachel Deiterding

Angela Grauerholz, Museé Carnavalet # 26, 2018, inkjet print on Arches paper, edition of 5. Gift of the artist, 2020.

Each artwork in the McIntosh Gallery collection has individual, yet intersecting histories. It is these moments of intersection, or patterns of collecting, that tell the Gallery’s story.

Holding Patterns: the short view marks the beginning of a comprehensive inquiry into the McIntosh Gallery collection to makes sense of how more than 4,000 artworks have come together to create this valuable resource. Considering a selection of artworks collected since 2020, the short view looks to the recent past. This reflection emphasizes some of the conversations that have been entangled with the collection over the past several years and poses critical questions about what it means to collect.

Soheila Esfahani, Meryl McMaster, and Angela Grauerholz are all concerned with collecting, whether this is through the personal ephemera that we use to document and define our sense of self; efforts to objectively order, categorize, and control the natural world; or institutional commitments to preserve cultural memory that begrudgingly remain susceptible to the passing of time. As McIntosh Gallery undertakes a detailed assessment of the collection, the recent past provides critical tools to inform the future. Each artwork has much to teach us about inclinations to collect across contexts and inspires new approaches to collecting. The Reference Table, a resource hub and study space, invites visitors to reflect on the complicated questions of collections alongside the gallery. Together, these materials frame the conversation as we consider how we might approach collecting differently moving into the future.

Thank you to Western Libraries for their support making the reference table possible. To view the complete exhibition reading list hosted by Western Libraries, please click here. 

The Connecting to Collections project is generously supported by Catherine Elliot Shaw.

About the artists:

The work of artist/photographer and graphic designer Angela Grauerholz has been exhibited and collected widely in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Amongst a selection of many solo exhibitions, her work was shown at the Westfälischer Kunstverein, (Münster, 1991), the MIT List Visual Arts Center, (Cambridge, MA, 1993), the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, 1999), the Power Plant (Toronto, 1999), the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College (Chicago, 1999), the Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston (2004), VOX, Contemporary Image Centre, Montreal (2006), and the Vancouver Public Library (2008). Angela Grauerholz (photographies 1990 – 1995), a survey exhibition organized by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in 1995, travelled to several institutions in Canada, Germany and France (1995-96). In 2010, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa mounted a retrospective exhibition of her work, consequently shown at the University of Toronto Art Center in 2011. In conjunction with the Scotiabank Photography Award, the Ryerson Image Centre in Toronto also put together another important survey exhibition (2016).

As Full Professor at the École de design, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)—where she also directed the Centre de design (2008 to 2012)—she taught typography and photography from 1988 to 2017. In 2019, the Emily Carr University of Art + Design awarded her an Honorary Doctorate of Letters.

Meryl McMaster is a Canadian artist with nêhiyaw (Plains Cree), British and Dutch ancestry. She is a citizen of the Siksika Nation in Alberta, and her family is also from Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Her photography explores questions of how our sense of self is constructed through land, lineage, history, and culture. Her distinct approach to photographic portraiture and self-portraiture incorporates the spontaneity of photography, the manual production of objects and sculptural garments that she creates in her studio and performance. In her works, these media illustrate a journey of self-discovery as she explores the tensions complicating our understanding of personal identity. Her work invokes a sense of the otherworldly, transporting herself and the viewer out of ordinary life and enlarging our understandings of inherited historical narratives.

McMaster’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Hear Museum, Remai Modern, Montclair Art Museum, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Merignac Photo, Canada House London, Ikon Gallery, Ryerson Image Centre, The Glenbow, The Rooms, Momenta Biennale, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, and Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, among others. From 2016-2020 her solo exhibition Confluence travelled to nine cities in Canada. Her work has also been acquired by significant public collections within Canada and the United States, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Eiteljorg Museum, and the National Museum of the American Indian, among others.

McMaster is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery (Toronto, Canada) and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain (Montréal, Canada)

Soheila Esfahani grew up in Tehran, Iran, and moved to Canada in 1992. She is a visual artist and Assistant Professor at Western University. Her research and art practice navigates the terrains of cultural translation in order to explore the processes involved in cultural transfer and transformation and questions displacement, dissemination, and reinsertion of culture. She is a recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund. Her work has recently been exhibited at the Canadian Cultural Centre Paris, Aga Khan Museum, Doris McCarthy Gallery, Cambridge Art Galleries among others and has been collected by various public and private institutions, including the Canada Council’s Art Bank.

Related Programming

Opening Reception

Saturday April 5, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Remarks at 2:30 p.m.

Complimentary parking available at select campus lots. Learn more  https://www.uwo.ca/parking/find/visitor/index.html 

Free | Open to the public

Join us in celebrating the launch of our spring exhibitions, featuring two exciting new projects: Alize Zorlutuna: Above Borders, Beneath Words and Holding Patterns: the short view – Recent Acquisitions from the McIntosh Gallery Collection.

Around the Reference Table: Study Along 

Wednesday April 9,  10 am – 12:30pm

Wednesday April 16, 1:00pm – 3:30pm

Wednesday April 23,  1:00pm – 3:30pm

Are you looking for a quiet place to do some studying? Or for a change of scenery as you prepare for exams? Around the Reference Table invites students to join gallery staff for a focused facilitated study session at the reference table installed in Holding Patterns: the short view. Join us and stay accountable to your study schedule. After all, concentration is contagious!

The study sessions will feature a brief introduction where everyone will share what they want to accomplish, followed by two 60-minute chunks of focused work with a quick break in between to move around, connect, and reset.

Can’t make it to a scheduled session? Drop by anytime during our open hours to take advantage of the study space.

Please Note:

• Arrive on time to help maintain the focus of our study group. Study spots are available on a first come, first serve basis.
• Wifi and power outlets available.
• Students are asked to leave their bags at the front desk. No food or drinks are permitted in the gallery.
• Want to stay later? No problem, you are welcome to use the reference table anytime during our open hours.

Free | Open to the public 

Let’s Talk Collections: What’s Up with the McIntosh Gallery Collection?

                Saturday, May 3, 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Presented as part of the ADAC Canadian Art Hop  https://www.canadianarthop.ca/ 

As the oldest university art gallery in Ontario, McIntosh Gallery has been collecting art since 1942. A lot has changed over this 83-year history, prompting us to consider critical questions about what it means to be a collecting institution in the contemporary moment. Join Rachel Deiterding, Curator of Collections & Special Projects and Museum and Curatorial Studies alumna, for a look inside ongoing work to review the McIntosh Gallery collection and the many questions and challenges that accompany this project.

Let’s Talk Collections is a public conversation series that makes visible behind the scenes work with the collection. Beginning with a short presentation about ongoing research and questions about the collection, the conversation will become a public forum, opening the floor to talk about collecting and its future together.

Free | Open to the public

The Connecting to Collections project is generously supported by Catherine Elliot Shaw