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The Rooms presents the distinctly urban Cities of Canada exhibit

The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery today unveiled an exciting new exhibit from the McCord Museum titled Cities of Canada: the Seagram Collection. Circulated by the McCord Museum, Montr�al, Qu�bec, the exhibit features 40 striking cityscapes from a variety of artists originally commissioned as part of a groundbreaking art show, also entitled Cities of Canada, which toured nationally and internationally in the early 1950s. Curated by Ihor Holubizky, Cities of Canada takes a fresh look at the groundbreaking 20th century exhibit.

Most of these remarkable cityscapes have not been displayed in public since 1967. Originally commissioned by Samuel Bronfman from the House of Seagram in 1951, the 90 works were donated to the McCord by the Seagram Company Ltd., in 2000, and that same year were certified as artworks of "outstanding significance and national importance" by the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board, an independent tribunal of the Department of Canadian Heritage. The McCord�s exhibition provides a rare opportunity to view these special works and to revisit, 50 years later, the extraordinary circumstances that first brought them into being.

Through the original Cities of Canada exhibition, the world received an alternate vision of the Great White North: one with cities "rising from its seacoasts, in the midst of its plains, at the foot of mountains"; one that was active, metropolitan and industrial. Certain paintings also appeared in advertisements for Seagram V.O. (whisky), which ran in international publications such as Time and Life as well as in the local media of many countries.

The Provincial Art Gallery is located in Newfoundland and Labrador�s $50 million state-of-the-art cultural facility known as The Rooms. With a focus on the work of Newfoundland and Labrador artists, both historical and contemporary, the gallery aims to place these works in a global context. Cities of Canada is an exhibition produced and traveled by the McCord Museum in Montreal and was made possible by the generosity of The Seagram Company Ltd. The McCord wishes to acknowledge the support of the Minist�re de la Culture et des Communications and the Montreal Arts Council.

Cities of Canada is on view at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery from December 16, 2005 to April 24, 2006.

NOTE TO EDITORS:

Photo #1: St. John�s, Newfoundland, 1951 by A.Y. Jackson, oil on canvas, 76.2 x 101.6 cm

Media contact: Deanne Hayward, Communications, (709) 757-8080, 691-5681, deannehayward@therooms.ca

In 1951, Samuel Bronfman (1898-1971), head of the House of Seagram, commissioned 22 Canadian Artists, including A.Y. Jackson, Robert Pilot, Joseph Casson, Albert Cloutier and Jacques Tonnancour to paint a range of cities within Canada. A legendary "captain of industry", Bronfman rejected the stereotypical view of Canada that dominates even today � that of a vast, idyllic and untamed wilderness. He also felt that private enterprise should do its share to sell its country as well as its products on the world market. For this reason, Bronfman commissioned 90 paintings of Canadian urban centres and displayed a selection of them throughout the Americas and Europe in 1953-54. The exhibition � and its four-ton, custom-built display unit � traveled almost 50,000 kilometres, beginning in San Juan and continuing to Havana, Mexico City, Caracas, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, London, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Stockholm, the Hague, Madrid, and ending with a visit to the Canadian Armed Forces in Loest, West Germany. This was followed by a cross-Canada tour in 1954-55.

An assortment of young artists and their established peers participated in the ambitious Seagram project. Expert guidance in the selection process came from Robert Pilot and A.Y. Jackson, both of whom played important roles in the formation of the modern, national school of painting in the first half of the 20th century. Other participants who are now recognizable names in the history of Canadian art include Goodridge Roberts, Frederick B. Taylor and Albert Cloutier.

A new Canadian identity was emerging in the 1950s, and the paintings in Cities of Canada reflect this shifting character as clearly as the 1951 census. The population tripled in the first half of the 20th century, and almost 57 per cent of Canadians were now located in urban environments. By this time Canada truly was a nation of city-dwellers, regardless of the rugged wilderness stereotype, and Bronfman meant to get this message across to the world � in his words, "to establish abroad a familiarity with our urban life."

2005 12 16                            3:50 p.m.