The organizers of Nuit Blanche held a launch event at OCAD this morning to announce this year’s curators—Wayne Baerwaldt, Director and Curator of Exhibitions at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art and Design; Dave Dyment, Director of Programming at Mercer Union, Toronto; Gordon Hatt, a writer and curator who lives in Kitchener; and Haema Sivanesan, Executive Director of Toronto’s South Asian Visual Arts Centre—and allow them to outline their individual......

SEPT. 28, 2006: Torontoist publishes "Two Peas In A Pod," a poorly considered article making fun of Eye and Now for both deeming Nuit Blanche significant enough to feature on their covers the same week. JAN. 17, 2008: Eye Weekly publishes "Where does Toronto Life get all those great ideas?" a poorly considered article making fun of Toronto Life for also deeming the Zeidler family, Dave Meslin, Yonge Street, and Council's right wing significant......

Photo of the Montreal edition of Mille Femmes from Galerie [sas]'s Picasa album. Consider the first editions of Toronto's two major multidisciplinary arts festivals: Nuit Blanche 2006 was a stunning success, a magical playground that revived the spirit of the blackout and provided a moving conclusion to Let's All Hate Toronto; Luminato 2007 was a mixed bag of highfalutin performances not attended by anyone you know (with the exception of the George F. Walker......

While events like Luminato and Nuit Blanche are fantastic, Toronto is sorely lacking in quality, long-term public art. Last April, Henk Hofstra created an "urban river" in Drachten, Holland. The Blue Road installation is an example of what mind-blowing urban public art can be. Featuring 1000 metres of road painted blue and the phrase "Water is Life" written in eight-metre-high letters across it, the Blue Road is reminiscent of the waterway that used to be......

Like it or not, there's no escaping the CN Tower. Views from the building are so ubiquitous that it's hard to find a genuinely interesting shot––to say nothing of shots of the building. Still, plenty of photographers pull off a view of the city from the tower that's different and interesting, be it of a fog-covered downtown or a city up late for Nuit Blanche. Add to that pack Derek Purdy's neat stitched panorama......

This Friday's Steam Whistle Unsigned is already the fourth in a series of independent music showcases at the Roundhouse, but it's the first we're really excited about. Really excited. Check out this lineup: The Carps are the best thing to come out of Scarborough since... er... hmm. Right. Anyway, the punk-soul duo recently opened for MIA at the Kool Haus, and if they're good enough for Maya, they're good enough for you. Opopo sound like......

Hey, remember Nuit Blanche? You know: that all-night cultural art thing a little over a month ago that maybe wasn't all that great. That thing. While the city did a pretty spectacular clean-up job, they've missed a spot: a sign sturdily attached about ten feet up a pole outside the Isabel Bader Theatre at Queen's Park and Charles Street on U of T campus still welcomes visitors to Zone 3, and invites them to......

Tomorrow night, November 2nd, a new CaseCamp-format un-conference will touch down in Toronto. Combining two sessions from the art community and one session from a related industry, ArtSmash is a unique speaker series that will generate a room full of creative ideas. The event is being coordinated by Ella Cooper and presented by the Emerging Arts Professional Network. Each speaker will be given 20 minutes to share a case study of a project they......

There has been a lot of debate recently about how and to what extent corporations should be allowed to fund community initiatives. City Hall is currently ablaze with lobbying and ambivalence as we draw nearer to City Council's vote on land transfer and vehicle ownership taxes, a decision that could easily blow the door open to more private sponsorship of community services and public space. Meanwhile, over three hundred volunteers from twenty companies, including......

As we mentioned in our Nuit Blanche photo album, the culprit behind that "Quick Lobotomy" sign you may have seen at Queen West's Tri Service Centre is our very own fauxreel. Earlier this morning, he posted a video on YouTube of his exploits, featuring some of the messages that he received from outraged/intrigued Nuit Blanche participants. It's lobotoriffic!......

Mayor Miller was in Etobicoke yesterday, trying to convince the people who regularly vote in Ford, Holyday, Nunziata, et al. that new taxes are a necessity. It went about as well as you'd expect. In an effort to boost turnout, Elections Ontario has put some advance polls in supermarkets. We hoped to write something sarcastic, but upon further reflection, this is a really good idea. John Tory has essentially killed his public-funding-of-faith-based-schools proposal, promising......

So, Nuit Blanche. You've seen the photos, you've checked out the panorama of Lower Bay Station, and, you've, ya know, presumably actually checked the whole thing out when it happened Saturday night. Maybe you loved it for its art and its happening-ness, maybe you weren't a big fan of its Scotiabankosity, maybe it wasn't quite as good last year. Maybe you missed it because you don't live downtown. Or maybe you're just ambivalent about......

Photo by inventor_77. BY AMANDA BUCKIEWICZ AND KAREN WHALEY The numbers haven't come in yet, but anyone with eyes could tell that this year's Nuit Blanche crowds amounted to much more than 2006's paltry 425,000 attendees. The entire city swelled with people in its every nook and cranny until the wee hours of the morning. And of course, with people comes congestion, lineups, and an all around sense of chaos. The general consensus of......

Contributor Tony Makepeace is taking us for some spins around our city with his fantastic VR panoramas. You can look up, down, side to side, in and out—pretty much every direction but back at yourself, which would be kind of creepy. Say hello to Panoramaist: the Toronto shoe-gazer's worst enemy. The city is still suffering from its Nuit Blanche hangover, and we here at Torontoist are no exception. Later on, we'll bring you some amazing......

Tomorrow night, scores of arts collectives and community groups will be putting on impressive exhibits, performances, and workshops as part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. The Toronto Public Space Committee thought it would be neat to do something, too, but guess which word in the event title made the TPSC uncomfortable. So instead they bring you noncorporatized Not Blanche, "a pwyc all-night public-space thing," straight outta the Brunswick Theatre from 11:00 p.m. Saturday through 3:00......

Photo by Qehven from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. If "free contemporary art things" happen to be your thing, then chances are you were one of the 425,000 people wandering around at last year's inaugural Nuit Blanche. And unless you've been living under a rock, you know that this year, it's back this Saturday night—with a vengeance. Boasting 123 museums and over 150 projects, teamed with all night subway on certain routes and txtArt allowing......

"Skeletons Out for a Walk" by emcnamee. There is a lot of madness to look forward to this week. Nuit Blanche madness (covered very soon by Torontoist), book sale madness, and literary events madness spread throughout the city. Torontoist will give you the lowdown on everything we can this week so you can sort it all out in your head. To settle down pre-Nuit Blanche jitters, you can check out the Art Aloud: Scotiabank......

OCAD's events calender may be gently filling up in anticipation of Nuit Blanche awesomeness, but before we can think of drowning our bodies in caffeine and submitting them to a twelve-hour period of sleeplessness (Torontoist will have our Nuit Blanche preview posts coming on Tuesday, incidentally), you may want to take some time to welcome OCAD's visitor. This week, Ann Hamilton has been invited as an artist in residence through the Nomadic Residents program,......

If you dig free stuff and you happen to be walking through Kensington Market or Queen West this week, local band The Craft Economy have burned a hundred copies of their debut EP All On C and stapled them to hydro poles as a way of promoting their upcoming show. All On C is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. That means whether you rip it off the Internet, or a pole,......

Toronto is a city of trees. From centuries-old native oaks in our parks to imported Norway maples planted on lawns, Toronto’s greenery may not always be evident, but it is an integral part of the city’s life and history. Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests (LEAF) and the Toronto Public Space Committee (TPSC) have come together to create a series of tree tours that explore the urban canopy. Toronto Tree Tours offers guided walks......

Looking for a lighthearted (but certainly not lightheaded) way to spend your Saturday night? Mammalian Diving Reflex is holding a spectacular sequel to their Nuit Blanche hit, ballroom dancing, and they need your help inflating some balloons. Pumps will be provided, so the easily winded need not fear. 3000 air-filled nuggets of multicoloured joy will be needed to fill the ballroom, so if you'd like to help, meet at 7 p.m. this Saturday, June......

OpenCities was a weekend-long unconference that took place on the 23rd and 24th of June. Many excellent conversations came out of the weekend, and this is one of them. You can read notes from the rest at OpenCities.ca. The late Jane Jacobs asserted that a great public space should attract different people for different reasons at different times of day. Why, then, have we forgotten the last part in our planning—and our thinking? Torontoist......

There is good advertising and there is bad advertising. There is even good guerilla advertising—depending on who you ask. Take, for instance, Boston's "Mooninites" promoting the Aqua Teen Hunger Force film, which polarized (and paralyzed) the city; last week's Fashion Targets Breast Cancer Tees, which polarized Torontoist commenters; or, now, GJP Advertising's party streamer installation on Queen Street, just outside of Nathan Phillips Square. Earlier this month, as a promotion for the party store......

Did you hear? Nuit Blanche is back! Transit officials are considering a bus-only lane on the DVP to promote mass transit. "For a passenger, it's very attractive. There's nothing better than sitting on a bus and going by stopped traffic," says GO Transit managing director Gary McNeil. High five to that. Much like the Regent Park revitalization, Lawrence Heights is getting an overhaul. The Jays suffered their ninth consecutive defeat last night with an......

Every weekday, Torontoist is facing off local memes and blog drama in a tournament-style ladder and you, the reader, decide the outcome. View the full ladder here. Some highlights: Kensington Market turns out the lights on Nuit Blanche (118 - 95): Dizzy from the smell of fish, Nuit Blanche stumbles in this epic battle of nocturnal versus somnambulant. Al Waxman named MVP of Kensington for numerous slam dunks. IllegalSigns.ca revokes Dufferin Grove's permit (109......

Every weekday, Torontoist is facing off local memes and blog drama in a tournament-style ladder and you, the reader, decide the outcome. View the full ladder here. Some highlights: ROM Crystal's sharp edges cut Miller's Hair (104 - 101): In the closest and most depressing match of the tournament so far, a napkin sketch gone wild shears the mayor's golden locks from atop his head. The late game upset may qualify for a recount......

Each weekday for the next two weeks, Torontoist is facing off local memes and blog drama in a tournament-style ladder and you, the reader, decide the outcome. View the full ladder here. Some highlights from Saturday's matches: 416 trounces 905 (95-12): In perhaps the most dramatic victory of the evening, the Toronto area code showed up the surrounding suburbs in a true show of telecommunications muscle. Miller's Hair buries Zombie Walks (59-47): The closest......

While we vehemently disagree, many people believe Torontonians to be an unfriendly bunch: impossible to approach, quick to end conversations with strangers and constantly averting their eyes. This has been the motivation for a number of excellent projects like Loosen Up Toronto and a recent free hug event on Yonge Street, inspired by the original Free Hugs Campaign by Juan Mann. Toronto just can't get enough of the meme that keeps on giving, however: a......

If you attended Nuit Blanche last fall and noticed pairs of police officers dancing the tango in the streets, apparently swept away by music pouring out of cars parked nearby, then you're already familiar with the charming and often funny work of Toronto artist Diane Borsato. It's conceptual art, but you don't need a degree in art theory to appreciate it. In 2003's "Warm Things to Chew On for the Dead," she placed "warm,......

This council is markedly more powerful than any that have sat before it, and citizens should embrace this as an opportunity to redress a number of grievances that have long been insurmountable because of conflicts with other orders of government. Now that the City of Toronto has a charter, we can finally rewrite our rather prudish history with laws more suited to us metropolitan types. By no means a complete list, these are things......