The Canadian War Museum will be presenting 14 new exhibitions over the next six years to commemorate the anniversaries of the two world wars.
“The war museum will play a lead role in the commemorations of this year’s historic celebrations and those in the years to come,” says Mark O’Neill, director general at the museum.
At a press conference on earlier this month, O’Neill and Heritage Minister Shelly Glover were among those who announced Canada’s plans for commemorating the anniversaries.
Included in the plans are three special events taking place in April. Focusing on Canadian war art, two galleries will be coming to the war museum. One of which involves the work of Canadian A.Y. Jackson.
But Starting with the rededication of the National War Memorial in August of this year, Glover said Canada will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War and the 75th anniversary of the Second World War until the year 2020.
Repairs to the National War Memorial began on Jan. 13 and will continue until this summer, when it plays host to the commemoration of the start of the First World War.
In 2009 it was found that the concrete and steel plating which reinforce the memorial slowly disintegrating.
So until the centennial commemorations technically start later this year, the National War Museum will be putting on a number of exhibitions to kick things off.
A First World War Centenary Gala will be held at the museum on April 10, launching the commemorations at the museum alone. The gala includes the unveiling of the two new war art exhibits at the museum’s John McCrae Gallery, which will be open through the summer months.
The first is “Transformations,” which opened last year in Calgary but closed earlier this month, and features the art of A.Y. Jackson and the German artist Otto Dix.
Laura Brandon, acting director of research at the museum, says this collection will be unique because it looks at two wartime artists from opposite sides of the conflict.
“Jackson became a member of the Group of Seven, and Otto Dix became one of Germany’s more celebrated war artists,” Brandon says.
“They’re contrasting viewpoints from both countries, but both are united in the fact that it was the First World War that set their direction as artists.”
The gallery will include over 70 landscape paintings, drawings and prints.
The second is called ‘Witness, Canadian Art of the First World War’ which looks at the experiences of Canadian society during the war from both the front and at home.
Brandon says this particular gallery includes “grand paintings” which were intended for a National War Memorial art gallery which was never built.
In the 1920s there was a plan to build a permanent facility at the National War Memorial which would house Canadian war art apart from the National Gallery itself. Lack of finance and the Great Depression caused the plans to simply disappear into history.
Brandon says that eight of these “grand paintings” now hang in Parliament on the large walls of the Senate.
Contrasting these large paintings in the collection are small sketches by Canadian soldiers who would often draw to pass time in the trenches and send the pictures home to their families.
“Both were designed to bring an experience that was happening thousands of miles away back home to Canadians so they would understand.”