Our wind-down recommendations are a great way to forget about a grueling work day. This week, head to the AGO and experience their newest exhibition: Impressionism in the Age of Industry: Monet, Pissarro, and More. 

When: February 16 to May 5, 2019

What it is: A new art exhibition 

Where it’s located: Art Gallery of Ontario 

Why visit: Take a stroll through a historical time in France when artists were trying to capture the spirit of the Industrial Age through their paintings and sculptures. 

(The exhibition is taking place between Feb 18 until May 5 at the AGO.) 

The newest exhibition that is installed at the AGO aims at exploring how French Impressionist artists and their contemporaries, who were famous for their perspectives on landscapes and seas, were obsessed with capturing the spirit of the Industrial Age. 

The exhibition, which features masterpieces by artists who were ahead of their time like Monet, Pissarro, Degas, Van Gogh, Cassatt and Seurat, highlights the new favourites like Luce and Caillebotte. This exhibition also features over 120 artworks, including paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, sculptures and period films that enhance every aspect of the period of impressionism. 

This exhibition essentially brings to life a time in Paris in the 1870’s in which there was immense transformation taking place in the city infrastructure, housing, how spaces were use and turning into factories in the suburbs, traffic installation and a more frequent steam-powered trains. This was a time in France when a rapid pace of changes were happening, and artists were there to capture moments of cage and archive them for us to witness now. 

Curated by Dr. Caroline Shields, AGO Assistant Curator for European Art, she says she hopes this exhibition will take people on a journey that will likely remind them of the ever-growing city like Toronto and that we see the changes as she compares this to the changing one Paris was experiencing hundreds of years ago. 

“This exhibition invites us to journey through this period of immense change, experiencing its thrills and challenges alongside the artists. As our cities and technologies rapidly change, it’s a journey that continues to resonate today,” Dr. Shields says.

“Seeing these works together for the first time provides an incredibly rich addition to the story of Impressionism as we know it.”