Celebrating 130 Years of Art at the Owens Art Gallery

Preparator/Registrar, Roxamy Ibbitson, standing in the Salon Hanging, 2022. Photo: Roger J. Smith

Salon Hanging

May 10 – September 21, 2025
130th Anniversary Celebration: May 28 @ 5:00pm
Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University

Curator: Roxamy Ibbitson

For over thirty years, Roxamy Ibbitson, the Owens’ legendary Preparator/Registrar, has been organizing and installing our famous Salon Hanging. A floor-to-ceiling feast for the eyes, this special exhibition invites visitors to contemplate over 100 works of art, many from the Owens’ original collection, which was acquired in 1893. First assembled in 1884-1885, this collection is one of the oldest collections of its kind in Canada. It features nineteenth-century European and North-American paintings, many still found in their original gilded frames, and full-scale plaster copies of classical Greek sculptures. Originally, the collection was used to teach students at the Mount Allison Ladies’ College (1854-1939), who learned through copying these pieces. As part of the Owens’ 130th anniversary celebrations, we are thrilled to share this beloved exhibition with our community once again.

Jon Sasaki, Microbes Swabbed from a Palette Used by F.H. Varley, 2020, archival print, 91.44 x 91.44 cm, image courtesy of the artist and Clint Roenisch Gallery (Toronto)

Jon Sasaki: Homage

May 29 – September 21, 2025
130th Anniversary Celebration: May 28 @ 5:00pm
Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University

Curator: Sarah Milroy, Executive Director and Chief Curator, McMichael Canadian Art Collection

The Toronto conceptual artist Jon Sasaki (Mount Allison University Class of ’96) began his career in the mid-nineties as a landscape painter. As the years have gone by, his approach to art making has evolved to include an ever-widening array of media, but one constant remains: his near-devotional attentiveness to the Group of Seven and their legacy in Canadian art. In this project, which was undertaken with the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Sasaki takes his devotion to almost comic excess—swabbing the palettes used by the Group members and Tom Thomson held in the McMichael collection and growing the resulting bacterial cultures in petri dishes for his eventual large-scale photography. The results are microbial landscapes in their own right—records of slow blooms of colour and texture that exalt the natural world at the microscopic level while honouring the ghosts of Canadian art history. Sasaki’s photographs are thus cultural in both senses of the word, and intriguing testaments to the power of close looking. In this exhibition, they are shown alongside the objects that gave them life.

This exhibition is organized and circulated by the McMicheal Canadian Art Collection, sponsored by Richard and Donna Ivey, and supported by Contact Photography Festival.

We would like to acknowledge that the Owens Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, is located within the traditional territory of Mi’kma’ki, the unceded ancestral homelands of the Mi’kmaq. Our relationship and our privilege to live on this territory was agreed upon in the Peace and Friendship Treaties of 1725 to 1752. Because of this treaty relationship, it is to be acknowledged that we are all Treaty People and have a responsibility to respect this territory.

Owens Art Gallery
Mount Allison University
61 York Street Sackville, NB, E4L 1E1 • 506-364-2574
owens@mta.ca
www.owensartgallery.com
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Monday to Friday, 10:00am to 5:00pm
Saturday and Sunday, 1:00pm to 5:00pm
Admission is Free

The Owens is partially accessible. The stairs from the entrance nearest the University Chapel have a handrail. There is also ramp access at this entrance, however, the ramp is steep. The stairs to the entrance off York Street have a handrail, but no ramp, and are covered with temporary wood treads. The main floor of the Owens is wheelchair accessible. Our second-floor gallery and gendered bathrooms are located in the basement and are not accessible. Two flights of stairs lead to each of these floors. LED lights are used throughout the building. The Owens welcomes guide dogs and other service animals. The closest accessible parking spaces are located on York Street across from the Owens. For detailed information on venue access, please visit our Accessibility page. If you would like to visit the Owens at a quieter time, or when all staff and visitors are masked, private visits can be arranged from 9:00-10:00 am on weekdays.

If you have any questions about your visit, please email owens@mta.ca or call (506) 364-2574.