Vancouver

Heller Lecture at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Before the grand opening of The Colour of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art curator Dawn Ades will be giving an illustrated lecture (May 26, at 7:00 pm) about the 350 works of surrealist art featured in the exhibition. Granville Online, May 25, 2011

Winnipeg

Portage Avenue goes to Paris.  Next month, Winnipeg’s Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art will co-present an exhibit called My Winnipeg at the Maison Rouge gallery in Paris. The Manitoba capital will be the first star of a series of annual exhibitions highlighting the art of cities around the globe. It’s the latest coup for Plug In, a contemporary art space that has created an artistic hub in an unlikely urban setting. Globe & Mail, May 24, 2011

Toronto

Work of art or child's scrawl: Which one is which?  The recent study from Boston College on objective standards of abstract expressionist paintings is still topical for Elizabeth Smith, executive director of curatorial affairs at the Art Gallery of Ontario. This weekend the Toronto gallery will open the exhibition Abstract Expressionist New York, on loan from Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art, and it features the work of many of the best-known artists of the movement. Globe & Mail, May 24, 2011

Junk house Jenga.  Home is where the art is for Vancouver's James Nizam. The artist, who was longlisted for the 2011 Sobey Award, has done several compelling projects in abandoned domiciles. Now, with a CONTACT festival show on in Toronto, Nizam talks to Leah Sandals about Jenga, junk heaps and jogging our collective memory. National Post, May 24, 2011

AA Bronson: The last prankster.  AA Bronson's business card says “Healer,” and like anything having to do with the last surviving member of the famous Toronto art pranksters General Idea, it's equal parts send-up and completely sincere. Toronto Star, May 24, 2011

Montreal

Choreography on canvas opens gallery. Allison Schulnik’s large impasto oil paintings have met the challenge of inaugurating Galerie Division’s new space in a massive new art complex in Griffintown.  Montreal Gazette, May 20, 2011

Berkeley, California

Stephen De Staebler, Sculptor of Bronze and Clay, Dies at 78  Mr. De Staebler’s fractured, dislocated human figures gave a modern voice and a sense of mystery to traditional realist forms.  New York Times, May 25, 2011 

New York

Renzo Piano’s "Meteorite": Downtown Whitney Fly-Through  There was much speechifying at today's groundbreaking for the Renzo Piano-designed Downtown Whitney, with the architect, Mayor Bloomberg, Whitney director Adam Weinberg, museum trustees and the Manhattan Borough President taking the podium. Piano lofted an all-white model of the building, calling it a "25,000-pound meteorite".  The most interesting part of the program---the fly-through video WhitneyFocus of the new building, which at last gives us a pretty good idea of what we can look forward to, hopefully in 2015, by which time the Whitney hopes to have raised the remaining $212 million in its $720-million capital (and endowment) campaign. (For the math-challenged, $508 million been raised thus far.)  CultureGrrl (Blog), May 24, 2011 

Does Art Heal? Melamid Opens A Clinic To Find Out  Conceptual artist and prankster Alexander Melamid (late of Komar and ...) has opened "the Art Healing Ministry, a storefront clinic at 98 Thompson Street in SoHo, where people can come in by appointment and be treated, by means of exposure to fine art, for a variety of physical and psychological ailments." Alexander Melamid’s Art Healing Ministry opens on Wednesday in SoHo. Drop by, and let fine art ease your afflictions.  New York Times, May 25, 2011