Prince Albert art lovers will have a chance to experience and discuss works created for the Prince Albert Winter Festival in a public, guided tour setting.
The Mann Art Gallery is introducing the ‘Art for Lunch’ monthly public tour. The tours will be led by Lana Wilson, who is the manager of education programs for the Mann Art Gallery.
In an interview with the Daily Herald on Friday, Wilson says the goal of the tours is to encourage discussion about the art in the exhibition.
“We had run a similar pilot program last year in the previous fall, the idea being that it would be nice to have a discussion group at the gallery and of course, offering public tours was a really natural way for that to happen. We might be inside the same exhibition a couple of times during the exhibition run, but there will always be a different topic that we can talk about.”
“We’ll always talk about the current exhibition, but I like to be able to kind of expand the discussion a little bit. Maybe we can talk about some of the ways that the artist is working and how this exhibition is related to their overall practice, or maybe talk about some wider topics that the exhibition touches on. That’s the thing that I love about art, is that art communicates. By discussing the art, getting viewpoints, questions, comments from the tour attendees, having us talk about these things together, I think we’ll really be able to think about the art in a more profound way and be able to engage with it on different levels.”
The first ‘Art for Lunch’ tour will feature pieces from the 49th Annual Prince Albert Winter Festival Art Show & Sale.
Wilson says she has heard a lot about the pieces on display and she wants to be able to share more about them with the general public.
“I have had the opportunity to hear so many stories about so many of the artworks, either from the artists themselves, or things that my coworkers have shared with me, or from talking to the curator. I think having being able to discuss some of those things with folks that might want to visit the gallery with a staff member or with their friends and have a chance to experience it that way.”
The ‘Art for Lunch’ tours are free and open to the public at no additional cost. Besides the tours, the Mann Art Gallery offers plenty of other programs. Wilson says she is hopeful that the tours will encourage more members of the public to become more involved with the gallery.
“We certainly have a variety of audience members that typically visit the gallery, but I think that this would be a nice way to maybe encourage folks that maybe they visited the gallery to walk around by themselves before, but maybe they haven’t engaged in any of the professional development programs or other workshops that we’ve held. I think that this has the potential to develop into a type of art appreciation group or art discussion group, a casual setting inside the gallery for a short time period, but a way to connect with art and other people in the community.”
The first ‘Art for Lunch’ public tour is scheduled for Friday, Feb. 18 beginning at 12 p.m.
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