[PHOTO] Ten photos from Jane at Home, Urbanspace Gallery, Toronto
On Tuesday, I linked to an interview in The Globe and Mail with Jim Jacobs, son of Jane Jacobs, about Jane at Home, an exhibit of artifacts from his mother's life. Hosted in the Urbanspace Gallery in the 401 Richmond complex at 401 Richmond Street West just east of Spadina, the only element of the exhibit of concern to me was its shortness: It is running only from the 29th of April to the 8th of May. That meant that I had to get down there, quickly. I found the time to do that yesterday.
Jane at Home is definitely a thorough exhibit, bringing together material from across her entire life. Her Pennsylvania childhood is represented by, among other things, some of her childhood toys and a book of her very early poetry.
From her final years in Toronto, not only do we have one of her trademark ponchos and reusable Annex shopping bag ...
... we even have some of her bottles of preserves and jams.
The exhibit is filled with artifacts of her quotidian life. I quite liked the many photographs, of friends and family and Jacobs herself, taken throughout her life in both of her countries. The deck chairs reupholstered into living room chairs were also neat, too, and comfortable, as was her old kitchen table from her Greenwich Village home.
I was delighted to find out that she was, more so than me, a collector of buttons. The sheer heft of her collection of fifty years of protest buttons, from the United States and Canada, left me in awe.
Jacobs had also accumulated a thorough collection of buttons from the campaign of Wendell Wilkie, challenger to FDR in 1940 presidential election. (She had supported Wilkie's campaign on the grounds that FDR's opting for a third term was a worrisome break from America's two-term tradition.)
Many of the artifacts tied in directly to her books. Her The Question of Separatism was represented by the pins and buttons she had taken from a 1981 Québec sovereignty collection, as well as by an Irish one-pound note.
And, of course, there were her books, in their original English and in their many translations.
We even saw her typewriter.
I had the chance to chat with Jim Jacobs, a genial man who filled me in on Jane at Home's backstory. The exhibit's shortness is a consequence of his very rapid development, from its initial conception this past winter to its installation in an art gallery that happened to have some free time between regularly-scheduled exhibits. If there is a single flaw in the exhibit, it is in the short time that it's up. I only hope that Jane at Home will be remounted for a longer period, ideally as some kind of permanent collection open to the public.
This exhibit will still be on display for two more days. I strongly recommend that anyone within reach of downtown Toronto with an interest in Jane Jacobs' life and work head down to the Urbanspace Gallery to see Jane at Home.
Jane at Home is definitely a thorough exhibit, bringing together material from across her entire life. Her Pennsylvania childhood is represented by, among other things, some of her childhood toys and a book of her very early poetry.
From her final years in Toronto, not only do we have one of her trademark ponchos and reusable Annex shopping bag ...
... we even have some of her bottles of preserves and jams.
The exhibit is filled with artifacts of her quotidian life. I quite liked the many photographs, of friends and family and Jacobs herself, taken throughout her life in both of her countries. The deck chairs reupholstered into living room chairs were also neat, too, and comfortable, as was her old kitchen table from her Greenwich Village home.
I was delighted to find out that she was, more so than me, a collector of buttons. The sheer heft of her collection of fifty years of protest buttons, from the United States and Canada, left me in awe.
Jacobs had also accumulated a thorough collection of buttons from the campaign of Wendell Wilkie, challenger to FDR in 1940 presidential election. (She had supported Wilkie's campaign on the grounds that FDR's opting for a third term was a worrisome break from America's two-term tradition.)
Many of the artifacts tied in directly to her books. Her The Question of Separatism was represented by the pins and buttons she had taken from a 1981 Québec sovereignty collection, as well as by an Irish one-pound note.
And, of course, there were her books, in their original English and in their many translations.
We even saw her typewriter.
I had the chance to chat with Jim Jacobs, a genial man who filled me in on Jane at Home's backstory. The exhibit's shortness is a consequence of his very rapid development, from its initial conception this past winter to its installation in an art gallery that happened to have some free time between regularly-scheduled exhibits. If there is a single flaw in the exhibit, it is in the short time that it's up. I only hope that Jane at Home will be remounted for a longer period, ideally as some kind of permanent collection open to the public.
This exhibit will still be on display for two more days. I strongly recommend that anyone within reach of downtown Toronto with an interest in Jane Jacobs' life and work head down to the Urbanspace Gallery to see Jane at Home.