articles
15 July 2024
Toplight: Roof Transparencies from 1760 to 1960 traces the evolution of skylights from their origins at the end of the eighteenth century, when this type of fenestration was first explored in Paris’s new Halle au blé (1763–1782), to James Stirling’s History Faculty Building, University of Cambridge (1963–1968). The exhibition is organized around a series of case studies(...)
Octagonal gallery
23 October 2008 to 15 February 2009
Toplight: Roof Transparencies from 1760 to 1960
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Toplight: Roof Transparencies from 1760 to 1960 traces the evolution of skylights from their origins at the end of the eighteenth century, when this type of fenestration was first explored in Paris’s new Halle au blé (1763–1782), to James Stirling’s History Faculty Building, University of Cambridge (1963–1968). The exhibition is organized around a series of case studies(...)
Octagonal gallery
Process as Interpretation seeks to sharpen the viewer’s awareness through consideration of nearly identical but subtly different images. The exhibition presents seven pairs of images from the CCA collection. Although these pairs are printed from the same negative, careful comparison of the subtleties of cropping, scale, tonal gradations, and medium reveal the printing and(...)
Hall cases
17 January 1990 to 22 April 1990
Process as Interpretation: Photographs from the CCA
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Process as Interpretation seeks to sharpen the viewer’s awareness through consideration of nearly identical but subtly different images. The exhibition presents seven pairs of images from the CCA collection. Although these pairs are printed from the same negative, careful comparison of the subtleties of cropping, scale, tonal gradations, and medium reveal the printing and(...)
Hall cases
This talk revisits the contested visual legacy of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1972 documentary Chung Kuo, Cina by placing it within a broader network of Cold War–era encounters between Western filmmakers and a carefully stage-managed People’s Republic of China. Connecting Antonioni’s state-sanctioned visit with projects by Shirley MacLaine, Jean Painlevé, and Canadian(...)
Paul-Desmarais Theatre
22 January 2026, 6pm to 7:30pm
Screening of film excerpts and live annotation: Antonioni’s Chung Kuo, Cina (1972)
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This talk revisits the contested visual legacy of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1972 documentary Chung Kuo, Cina by placing it within a broader network of Cold War–era encounters between Western filmmakers and a carefully stage-managed People’s Republic of China. Connecting Antonioni’s state-sanctioned visit with projects by Shirley MacLaine, Jean Painlevé, and Canadian(...)
Paul-Desmarais Theatre
articles
Where Was Not Modernism?
Where Was Not Modernism?
Ikem Stanley Okoye redefines the origins of African modernism
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Isola and Norzi: Conshelf II
Artists Hilario Isola and Matteo Norzi discuss Jacques Cousteau’s Conshelf II underwater base and their own project Liquid Door, which proposes to revive the dream of living underwater by making Cousteau’s Starfish House inhabitable. Based in New York, Italian-born Hilario Isola and Matteo Norzi have collaborated since 2003, pooling their backgrounds and interests in art(...)
Paul Desmarais Theatre
13 May 2010 , 7pm
Isola and Norzi: Conshelf II
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Artists Hilario Isola and Matteo Norzi discuss Jacques Cousteau’s Conshelf II underwater base and their own project Liquid Door, which proposes to revive the dream of living underwater by making Cousteau’s Starfish House inhabitable. Based in New York, Italian-born Hilario Isola and Matteo Norzi have collaborated since 2003, pooling their backgrounds and interests in art(...)
Paul Desmarais Theatre
Visiting Scholar Tamar Zinguer presents her research: This talk explores the attraction that the quantitatively precise literary term “degree zero” holds. Through a selection of historic references to the zero degree in and about architecture, the talk articulates a plurality of zeroes and different modalities of nothingness as they apply to the discipline of(...)
Shaughnessy House
10 July 2014, 6PM
Visiting Scholar Seminar: Tamar Zinguer
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Visiting Scholar Tamar Zinguer presents her research: This talk explores the attraction that the quantitatively precise literary term “degree zero” holds. Through a selection of historic references to the zero degree in and about architecture, the talk articulates a plurality of zeroes and different modalities of nothingness as they apply to the discipline of(...)
Shaughnessy House
2016 Visiting Scholar Farhan Karim presents his research: In the recent development of architectural history, the involvement of Western architects in emerging postcolonial nations has been reviewed within the broader geopolitics of decolonization and global cold war. That analysis is certainly correct, as far as it goes, but what is needed historiographically is nuanced(...)
Shaughnessy House
7 July 2016, 6pm
Visiting Scholar Seminar: Farhan Karim
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2016 Visiting Scholar Farhan Karim presents his research: In the recent development of architectural history, the involvement of Western architects in emerging postcolonial nations has been reviewed within the broader geopolitics of decolonization and global cold war. That analysis is certainly correct, as far as it goes, but what is needed historiographically is nuanced(...)
Shaughnessy House
Blake Fitzpatrick and Robert Del Tredici talk about their investigations of Port Hope in a conversation moderated by Louise Désy, CCA Curator, Photographs. Port Hope is Canada’s premier atomic town and the nation’s conduit to the nuclear world. In 1932, Eldorado Nuclear Ltd. built a radium refinery a stone’s throw from the town’s Main Street. After shifting to uranium(...)
Main galleries
25 March 2017, 3pm
Port Hope in the Age of Nuclear Waste
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Blake Fitzpatrick and Robert Del Tredici talk about their investigations of Port Hope in a conversation moderated by Louise Désy, CCA Curator, Photographs. Port Hope is Canada’s premier atomic town and the nation’s conduit to the nuclear world. In 1932, Eldorado Nuclear Ltd. built a radium refinery a stone’s throw from the town’s Main Street. After shifting to uranium(...)
Main galleries
2016 Visiting Scholar Olumuyiwa Adegun presents his research: European cities of the nineteenth century, like African cities today, experienced severe housing problems. Shanty towns marked Berlin and Paris in ways that are similar to how Nairobi and Johannesburg have been characterized by informal settlements in the last few decades. This lecture explores the history of(...)
Shaughnessy House
4 August 2016, 6pm
Visiting Scholar Seminar: Olumuyiwa Adegun
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2016 Visiting Scholar Olumuyiwa Adegun presents his research: European cities of the nineteenth century, like African cities today, experienced severe housing problems. Shanty towns marked Berlin and Paris in ways that are similar to how Nairobi and Johannesburg have been characterized by informal settlements in the last few decades. This lecture explores the history of(...)
Shaughnessy House