September at the Museum: Art, IPE History and Local Heritage
This September, the Armstrong Spallumcheen Museum & Art Gallery is celebrating IPE Month with exhibitions that connect beautifully to animals, landscape, memory, and the heritage of this region.
Our September exhibition features the work of Kate Tooke and Lana Schuster. Together, their work offers two very different ways of seeing the world around us.
The reception for this show is on September 10th from 6-8 PM, however the show is open from September 3rd, so please feel free to pop in for a sneak peek of the incredible art!
Kate Tooke’s representational oil paintings in her show, Animal Call, bring animals into close and thoughtful focus, meeting chickens, horses, dogs, and other familiar creatures with humour, dignity, and care.
Tooke’s animal portraits are full of presence and personality. Her paintings reflect care, attention, and relationship, inviting viewers to look again at the animals who share our farms, homes, and rural lives. We are also proud to share that Kate is a two-time Ribbon Show winner this year, winning first place in the Representational category and first place in the People’s Choice Awards.
Lana Schuster’s Where Light Remains brings together paintings that suggest gardens, skies, shorelines, fields, and remembered places without defining them completely. Her work is layered, expressive, and full of movement, inviting viewers to slow down and reconnect with the beauty and wonder found in the natural world.
Schuster’s work moves between abstraction and remembered landscape, using layered colour, expressive brushwork, texture, and light to suggest gardens, trees, fields, skies, and weather.
These artists were selected for IPE Month because their work reflects subjects and themes that are part of our heritage through the Interior Provincial Exhibition’s history. Animals, agriculture, landscape, weather, beauty, and community are all part of that story, and each artist brings her own voice to it.
This year, we are honoured that the Armstrong Spallumcheen Museum & Art Gallery has been selected as the IPE Charity of Choice. As part of this partnership, our art shows are sponsored by the IPE.
We are also creating a special installation at Hassen Arena during the IPE. IPE Through the Ages will feature a curated series of photographs, hands-on reading materials, and artifacts, taking visitors on a journey through the past 125 years of IPE history.
Make sure to visit us during this wonderful opportunity to share our archives with the wider community during one of Armstrong’s busiest and most beloved events, and keep an eye on our communications, you may see these photos back later in the year!
If you are downtown, even just walking by, we hope you will take a moment to appreciate the historical and artistic window displays created by our Arts Committee. Their attention to detail in creating beautiful seasonal displays is stunning, and it can be easy to miss if you are in a rush.
We also want to remind the community that the Museum & Art Gallery is a designated refuge during heat and smoke periods. Please feel free to stop in for water and a break in an air-conditioned, air-filtered building.
And with the IPE coming up, one of the best ways to support your Museum & Art Gallery is to choose us as your parking spot during the fair. IPE parking is one of our most important fundraisers of the year, and your support helps keep local history, archives, exhibitions, and arts programming alive in our community.
The opening reception for the September Art Show takes place Thursday, September 10, from 6–8 PM. All are welcome, and admission is free.
This August, the Armstrong Spallumcheen Museum & Art Gallery presents two exhibitions that invite visitors into two very different, but complementary, ways of seeing: one grounded in close observation of the natural world, and the other rooted in intuition, colour, and abstraction.
In the early 1970’s residents of Armstrong found themselves powerless to save an historic building from being demolished. This event was the spark that led to the creation of the Armstrong Spallumcheen Historical Society, incorporated in 1974. In the beginning, the Society’s collection consisted mainly of historical photographs. Almost a decade later the City of Armstrong offered the Society space in part of a machine storage building. The Society opened a museum to the public in 1983. In 1988, with the help of a gift from Rusty Freeze, they expanded into the rest of the building and added an Art Gallery. At this time the name of the Society changed to the Armstrong Spallumcheen Museum and Arts Society. The museum and art gallery are the result of the dedication of the many volunteers from the community who continue to be active in it’s operation.
THE Armstrong Spallumcheen Museum and Art Gallery is located in historic downtown Armstrong. The first building on this site was moved from Lansdowne in 1901. Over time he expanded the building. The business was later operated by his sons and gradually changed into a machine shop. It has also served as a storage facility, automobile garage and gas station. Since becoming a museum, the facility has been upgraded many times, Our renovations in 2011 included fresh paint, new signage, a timber frame entrance and a colonnade. We now have a brand new, but still historic, look for a favourite old building.