Soheila Esfahani » Projects

CURRENT EXHIBITION

Recent Acquisitions from the McIntosh Gallery Collection: Angela Grauerholz, Meryl McMaster, and Soheila Esfahani

April 5- July 11, 2025

Curated by Rachel Deiterding

McIntosh Gallery
London, ON

Each artwork in the McIntosh Gallery collection has individual, yet intersecting histories. It is these moments of intersection, or patterns of collecting, that tell the Gallery’s story.

Holding Patterns: the short view marks the beginning of a comprehensive inquiry into the McIntosh Gallery collection to makes sense of how more than 4,000 artworks have come together to create this valuable resource. Considering a selection of artworks collected since 2020, the short view looks to the recent past. This reflection emphasizes some of the conversations that have been entangled with the collection over the past several years and poses critical questions about what it means to collect.

Soheila Esfahani, Meryl McMaster, and Angela Grauerholz are all concerned with collecting, whether this is through the personal ephemera that we use to document and define our sense of self; efforts to objectively order, categorize, and control the natural world; or institutional commitments to preserve cultural memory that begrudgingly remain susceptible to the passing of time. As McIntosh Gallery undertakes a detailed assessment of the collection, the recent past provides critical tools to inform the future. Each artwork has much to teach us about inclinations to collect across contexts and inspires new approaches to collecting. The Reference Table, a resource hub and study space, invites visitors to reflect on the complicated questions of collections alongside the gallery. Together, these materials frame the conversation as we consider how we might approach collecting differently moving into the future.

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