This evening, Toronto Culture and Fort York are unveiling a permanent public art installation under the Gardiner Expressway (off Fort York Boulevard, between Bathurst and Fleet Streets). In WATERTABLE, Toronto artists Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak use video and lights to create the effect of rippling water on the underside of the highway—a reminder that the Gardiner runs along what used to the original shoreline of Lake Ontario. Ever wonder why the the Toronto......

Many of us developed an affection for opera early in life through Looney Tunes versions of Rossini and Wagner. For some, having Elmer Fudd chant “Kill the Wabbit” to the tune of “Ride of the Valkyries” in Chuck Jones's animated masterpiece taught us everything we wanted to know about opera. But if your ambition to appreciate the finer things in life extends beyond Bugs Bunny, real opera could be an intimidating world of old rich......

This what a bioterrorist looks like, according to the FBI. Dr. Steven Kurtz (right) is a Professor of Art at SUNY Buffalo and member of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), an art and theatre collective co-founded by Kurtz and his late wife, Hope. In May 2004, the Kurtzes were preparing a piece called Free Range Grains, which allowed participants to test food for the presence of genetically modified organisms, when Hope died of heart failure......

As Torontoist reported yesterday, the Hummingbird Centre is changing its name to the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, marking the second change in corporate naming rights during the venue's half-century existence. Support of the site has ranged from a philanthropic brewer (O'Keefe Brewing head E.P. Taylor) to a multinational media company. As today's ad promised, Yonge and Front has seen a wide range of performances since the O'Keefe Centre officially rolled out the......

Beyond the month of February, it is not often that Torontonians have a public opportunity to celebrate their city’s black legacy. But they’ll get one this weekend at the 15th annual Marcus Garvey Celebrations. The celebrations, which honour the iconic Jamaican American revolutionary, will this year also pay tribute to Torontonians Lucie and Thornton Blackburn in commemoration of the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in Ontario. The Blackburns were African American......

The city of Paris has recently been courting tourists from London, England with a new series of ads that look like this: What does a Paris tourism poster have to do with Toronto? Well, the C'est So Paris ads, with their posy compositions, saturated colours and irreverent humour, bears an uncanny resemblance to those T.O. Live With Culture posters from January, only these are actually good. The Parisian ads are witty, attention-grabbing and intelligible—everything the......

Tut tut tut. We’re all very disappointed in you, John Krasinski, for your decision to star in License to Wed. Sure, you’ve been working so hard to build up your hipster cred—interviewing the Shins, playing on stage with Ben Gibbard, but I’m afraid we might have to revoke your hipster privileges. The Sun’s Kevin Williamson claims of the film, “you can at least approximate the experience of sitting through this alleged romantic comedy at home......

Photo by Carrie Musgrave. We could begin this week by rambling on about how we're into the second half of the year already (really?!) or tell you all about our Canada Day weekend, but let's just get straight to it this week. Go see The White Stripes on Thursday. If there's one show you go to this entire summer, this is the one. Really. We recently saw the Stripes at Bonnaroo and they were......

Photo of CP-7069 from Railroadfan.com On the weekend when we celebrate our nation's history, we seem on the verge of destroying some of it. Sitting in its home at the CPR John Street Roundhouse, a 1948 CP Rail locomotive engine known as the Hauling Fool is about to be scrapped to make way for a Leon's furniture store, and there is little its owners can do about it. Located just outside Bay 14 at......

Torontoist has had a long history of critiquing Tourism Toronto's lackluster ad campaigns. Remember Toronto Unlimited? We had a field day with that one. And those awful Live With Culture ads? Yuck. But it seems like the appointment of David Whitaker as Tourism Toronto's president back in March injected a little spirit into the agency. Earlier this week, they announced a new campaign targeting gay tourists from the States. The tagline? Toronto: As Gay......

Billed as being about "Film & Culture About People from Israel & Palestine," the Voices Forward Film Festival is particularly intriguing because the area is going through a cultural renaissance right now, with writers and directors rejecting the nationalism of the previous generations to tell their own stories. The fest not only unites filmmakers from that troubled region, but it also shows Toronto audiences that, hey, it's not all bombing and hatred in the Middle......

Another day, another forum designed to unpack and solve this environmental crisis we seem to have gotten ourselves into. This one, in particular, is part of the ongoing St. Lawrence Centre Forum series. A panel of developers and architects will attempt to imagine possibilities for Toronto as the "Greenest City in North America" by 2020, hopefully thinking beyond the usual suspects of green roofs and solar PV panels.Thursday May 24, 7:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.......

How is National Poetry Month treating you? On the second week of celebration, Torontoist is beginning to buckle a little under the strain of too much fun, but it warms our hearts to witness the large number of bookish events offered this April. We are happy to announce the winners of our poetry contest as part of the nationwide festivities. Back in January, Torontoist launched a Toronto poetry contest to encourage the writing of......

Just like Will Smith circa 1998, Tourism Toronto is going to Miami. In the latest in a series of weird decisions (like that weird-looking Toronto Unlimited logo or that utterly crappy "Live With Culture" ad campaign), the organization has hired David Whitaker as their President. The Financial Post reports that Whitaker, an American citizen, has been working for the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau since the early 90s, and is currently the Bureau's Executive......

With the sun out, the temperatures high, one can only think of one thing—what's going on in the World of the -ist's? Bostonist dug deep to uncover Barack Obama's unpaid parking tickets, their Governor's latest ethical lapse, and a plagarizing sports writer. Chicagoist had everything in twos: two views on having the Olympics, losing two members of their Super Bowl team, and two music festivals. DCist put their noses in legal books as they wrote......

"I’m going to Pakistan in November to share Q&A with young theatre artists during a festival celebrating Punjabi culture. I arrive on November 17. Look for more posts then." —Darren O’Donnell Thus begins Darren's account of his time spent presenting his interactive theatre work in rural Pakistan and in Mumbai, India. Video Show for the People of Pakistan and India is a collection of footage from his journey, and will be shown at The Centre......

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Canada Council for the Arts, the organization wants us to get involved in their "50 for 50" Arts Challenge. Canadians are invited to meet the challenge by engaging in 50 arts-related activities over the course of the year. Do not fret if you’ve neglected the arts since Jan 1 due to laziness and winter hibernation; there's still ample time to reach the goal in the 45 weeks that......

Last Thursday's 20th Anniversary bash for Artscape was a who's-who of Toronto arts philanthropy: the guest list boasted big names from around the city like Councillors Joe Mihevc and Gord Perks, Toronto Arts Council Executive Director Claire Hopkinson, Poet Laureate Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, and more. It was an evening of being seen, sampling a whirlwind of savoury hors d'oeuvres and trading congratulatory speeches with some of Toronto's most influential arts personalities. Artscape can......

Tomorrow, Jaakko van’t Spijker will be in Toronto speaking as part of the University of Toronto School of Architecture, Landscape and Design spring lecture series on Radical Everyday: Adventures in the Landscape of the City. Jaakko van’t Spijker graduated from Delft University of Technology. He, Henk Bultstra and Bert Karel Deuten founded Studio Sputnik in Rotterdam as a research and design practice. In 2003 they published the manifesto Snooze: Immersing Architecture in Mass Culture launching......

Do either of these ads say "Toronto" to you? Captions: at left, "Do you think I need a breast reduction?", at right: "Tonight I'm not Susan. Call me Antoinette." They're the city's new "T.O. Live With Culture" ads. Made from leftover money from the Live With Culture budget, they are supposed to target American tourists: according to CTV, "the ads are destined for alternative weekly newspapers in eight U.S. border cities. Readers in Buffalo, Rochester,......

One of Toronto’s newest literary series, Toronto Wordstage (which is run by Allan Briesmaster, John Calabro, Beatriz Hausner, and Lucianno Iacobelli) celebrates its 13th edition this evening with a stellar line-up of writers. Tonight’s event will feature novelist and playwright Michael Wex (Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods); poet Rafi Aaron (Surviving the Censor: The Unspoken Words of Osip Mandelstam); Sonia D’Agostino; and poet a. rawlings (pictured, and author of......

Reading Toronto states "the city is a book with 100,000 million poems." Torontoist is aware of many poems that have been written by Toronto poets, but thinks there is ample room in the GTA for a few more (maybe a million-or-two would improve the present un-poetic monstrosity that is Dundas Square). We're also curious to know where new poems are being written: During TTC commutes? On the picturesque grounds of Casa Loma? Under the......

Friday, Dec. 8 will mark the debut of LISTEN!, a listening group and library started to bridge the apparent gap between Toronto's music scene and the University of Toronto students in its midst. "We started the club up because we feel that Toronto's music culture is very rich but that a lot of U of T kids aren't really aware of everything that's available to them right in their own backyard," says Valentine Gurfinkel,......

Nine graduate students at Ryerson University and York University in the communications and culture program have banded together to create Make the World Your Salon: Modernist Salon Culture, an exhibit that resurrects the salon culture of the early twentieth century frequented by the bohemian artists of the day. The exhibit encompasses photography, artwork, and multi-media, and features graphic photography by New Yorker Carl Van Vechten; a reproduction of Marcel Duchamp’s With White Noise; and the......

When Coach House Books launched uTOpia: Towards a New Toronto last year we were absolutely, positively thrilled. The book brought together a group of people in love with the city and its potential. A year later, we're just days away from the launch of the State of the Arts, the sequel to that fine volume. With many of the same contributors as the first volume, we know that Coach House will pull off a fine......

There seems to be something for everyone this week, but let's just call it the 'week of The Hip' and be done with it, since they've taken up residence at The Phoenix for four sold out shows. We're curious to know if anyone actually paid $60 + TM charges per ticket to attend all of them? 'Fess up! If that's not your thing, you can always get spewed on by Gwar tonight at the......

Torontoist pals and favourite artistic couple (sorry Brangelina) Emily Schultz and Brian Joseph Davis are opening up the Centre for Culture and Leisure No.1 tomorrow night. The duo wanted to "provide a fluid, public space for play" and have opened up this spot just off Queen Street and Elm Grove Ave. Their inaugural event will include bike field trips by Carolyn Tripp, a video work by Phillip Monk and Pocket Game, some kind of scavenger......

It's a busy music week, this one. There's everything from samba to classical music, so all of you anti-hipsters should be pleased. Most importantly, Torontoist's 'Back to School' Party is this Thursday, and we better see y'all there -- especially you anonymous commenters. You know who you are. As always, if there's a show happening that we haven't listed, let us know in the comments. Recently Announced Oct. 4 - The Long Winters @......

We start today's blog roundup with more line eavesdropping. This time it's a couple complaining about their single tickets and the definition of "best seat available." The gist of the complaint: The woman was arguing that "Best seat available" should mean she should be able to wait until the last minute and then choose empty seats on the floor. "They used to let us do that." She really hated that those who were lucky enough......

It's not quite an uprising more like a small complaint but an important one nonetheless. "Why are there no Q and A's at the Elgin theatre," Jeremy Barker at Popped Culture asks? "We’ve already accosted two film fest directors this week to ask what was up. Noah Cowan, co-director of the festival, explained that while “we understand that interaction is integral to the festival experience, emptying the theatre is a logistical nightmare....But is it really......