The MacKenzie Art Gallery has announced the launch of the Gallery’s new website, including a new rich forum for art and ideas called The 13TH Floor. A new online artist project will launch the site. Blue Sky Project: Connecting Canadian and International Artists via the Colour Blue is organized by Saskatchewan artist Marie Lannoo, and compiles photos of the sky from artists around the world, including some photos from Canadian artists who were travelling abroad.
The project launches on the MacKenzie’s new website – mackenzie.art, as part of a section entitled The 13TH Floor. This exciting project will release a new photo each day for 31 days. The 13TH Floor will be the MacKenzie Art Gallery’s multi-faceted platform for creation, dissemination, and interpretation. A gathering place, open forum, studio, magazine, resource, and exhibition space, The 13TH Floor—as the name suggests—is located somewhere in between physical and virtual presence. The 13TH Floor—a floor that is generally not permitted in modern architecture—or is occasionally designated by the gallery’s namesake, “M”, is a space of reverie and possibility that traverses time and space. It is a place that can be located concretely—and yet does not exist—an in-between space, in the cloud. The 13TH Floor will traverse—and draw together—both the physical experience of the gallery, and the virtual realms of the internet. It will enhance the experience of visitors to the Gallery, and make the MacKenzie’s cultural experiences more accessible regionally, nationally, and internationally. The 13TH Floor will provide immersive and interactive experiences, where visitors will be invited to co-create meaning with the institution and the communities it serves through a variety of modes, media, and experiences.
“We are thrilled to have Marie Lannoo help us launch the website with such a beautifully conceived project,” says Executive Director and CEO of the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Anthony Kiendl. “By constructing the Gallery’s 13TH Floor, we will create another space where the public can meet writers, philosophers, activists, artists, scientists, hackers, sociologists, critics, and other cultural producers who will share new texts, images and ideas. These stories will be found on our site alongside other engaging content. Part of our rationale for enriched online content is to increase accessibility to the MacKenzie.”
Lannoo recently designed a new Saskatchewan Arts Award for the Saskatchewan Arts Board to be given out over the next five years, and has an exhibition on view at the College Art Galleries at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon – The Architecture of Colour – which runs until December 21. Her Blue Sky Project, which launched today, will be housed on an ongoing basis on the MacKenzie’s website and available via a link from her project space, 330g.ca.
“I am thrilled to be able to participate in the launch of the MacKenzie’s new website with this online project,” says artist and curator Marie Lannoo. “This is a project well-suited for a virtual environment, as it is not only accessible to an online audience, but was equally accessible for artists to participate in. The sky is a readily available, free access point for everyone, and artists were asked to simply use their cellphones to point, shoot, and send their images.” Lannoo continues, “A blue sky is a universal visual, but with the impact of climate change, how much longer will that be the case?”
The MacKenzie’s new website, designed by Urban Ink in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and developed by The Hatchery in Victoria, British Columbia, will be phased in. The first phase will include enhanced information on current and upcoming exhibitions, a robust event list, information on our education programs and classes, engaging content on the 13TH Floor and online ticketing. Additional French translation, the MacKenzie’s online collection, artist biographies, and enhanced retail will follow in subsequent phases.
“We wanted our new website to develop over time to be a resource for international audiences to engage with the MacKenzie,” says the MacKenzie Art Gallery’s Director of Communications Deborah Rush. “The website now allows us to offer another channel for artists to exhibit their work outside of a traditional institutional space. Visitors from around the world can see new, online-only projects, and can explore our current and future exhibitions in a more in-depth way than our previous website allowed.”
The website is an important piece of the Gallery’s new brand and visual identity and is another step in re-imagining what an Art Museum for the 21st century can be.
