Sam Levy (2L)
Welcome (back) to Toronto! After a summer featuring the immensely successful Pan-am Games and a soaring Blue Jays team, Toronto is continuing to cement itself as one of the world’s best cities (sorry Montreal).
The idea for First Thursdays came about in 2012, where a team at the Gallery envisioned a space for emerging artists in Toronto, which they would showcase to a diversified, younger audience. At the same time, they knew that any venue could have a party, but what the AGO offered was chance to also have a meaningful, sometimes critical dialogue too.
Enter First Thursdays, where on the first Thursday of each month, the AGO opens its doors late into the night, with drinks, food, live music and a range of programming interspersed throughout.
One example of a theme was the ‘Basquiat First Thursday,’ which was centred not only around the Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition, but also the tragic civil unrest in the US. At the event, over 500 people took the time to sit in on a panel discussion on issues of race in partnership with the Black Lives Matter Coalition.
Another great theme was this September’s ‘Nostalgia Canadiana.’ The theme was based on the AGO’s ‘Picturing the Americas’ exhibition, and featured music by the Rheostatics in honour of their CD, Music Inspired by the Group of Seven.
The AGO is engaged in a global conversation, with museums and galleries trying to bridge the gap between them and people in their twenties and thirties. With a capacity crowd even when it increases the available tickets, First Thursdays shows that the AGO has tapped into a group that wants to have a good time, but also wants to connect to the important conversations happening in our city today. O’Neill hopes that as the event grows there will be ever more flexibility to go deeper, take more risks and offer more to patrons. Like the Basquiat exhibit name announces, now’s the time.
