AGO rolls out the Royce for the Cadillac of art exhibitions

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PEDAL TO THE METAL FOR MEDIA PRE-PREVIEW OF:
Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts

Launching an Art exhibition is like posting a new website. If you don't get an audience in the first week or two, in all likelihood you are doomed to the curse of low numbers. If you hate to see a website die, you will absolutely loathe to see an art show tank at the box office. No attendance. No revenue. And,in these days of tight government money, no revenue means public rebuke, a tsunami of second guessing and staff lay-offs.
Long before the public knows about an upcoming blockbuster, we publicists are hard at work trying to make sure that never happens. That means getting the media up-to-speed about what is coming down the road. There are two goals for the early pumping of sunshine. We want to get advanced publicity so that our audience is already marking our show in their Blackberries, and secondly, we want to make sure that our media launch will be well attended.


PR is free ... sort of. An art gallery has to pay someone like me. The coffee and doughnuts don't come cheap (kidding), the press kits have to be produced and the curators have to take a break long enough to speak intelligently at the preview media launch.
It is almost always worth the effort. Common wisdom holds that a consumer is 4 times more likely to believe and be motivated by an article in print than if he or she saw an ad for the same event. People are even more motivated when they see moving images on television compared to 20-second paid spot.
A full page advertisement in a Toronto daily can cost $30,000. A well attended media preview can result in the equivalent of 20 full page advertisements! Not bad for a plate of stale doughnuts.
In pre-recession days, when the media was flush and the Internet was a bit player on the arts scene, a well attended media preview was a sure bet. Not anymore. Papers don't have space, television doesn't have spare cameras, and when was the last time a radio station (aside from the CBC) sent a real reporter to an art preview?
The Art Gallery of Ontario is ready to launch a MAJOR exhibition this month. Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts, is a British created traveling exhibition that will appeal not only to the art world, but, Ontario's growing Indo-Canadian community. This is the first exhibition to comprehensively explore the opulent world of the maharajas and their unique culture of artistic patronage.
The AGO PR department is organizing a full scale mediapreview for early next week, but, in an effort to make sure that the media understands the "Bigness" of this exhibition, held a Media pre-preview today. This is something usually not done in Toronto, just because it is hard enough to get the media out once for a full scale press conference, let alone twice to a not-so-complete exhibition hall.
Although the galleries are still being prepared, the media was allowed in this morning to see THE major piece of the exhibition being installed. It was a tease - it put the media on notice that bigger and better things will be unveiled next week.
Gallery installers put down their tools long enough for the media, myself included, to take pictures and video of “ The Star of India”, an antique Rolls Royce Phantom II. This legendary 1934 Rolls Royce Phantom II (pictured above) was custom-built for His Highness Thakore Sahib Dharmendrasinhji Lakhajiraj of Rajkot. The car is named after the famous 563 carat star sapphire “Star of India”.
According to Haema Sivanessan,AGO Special Project Assistant"the Star of India is almost the most famous Rolls Royce on the earth, second only to the original Rolls Royce Silver Ghost".
The bonnet and wings shown in the photo above, are made of polished aluminum and the rest of the body is of a saffron ochre finish, a tinge which is a symbol of purity in India. Visible on all doors and side windows is Rajkot’s state crest with an inscription meaning “an impartial ruler of men of all faiths.”
The car is on loan from an auction house and last I heard is up for sale for $13 million. I believe it is still roadworthy but because of its value is not driven
I am the mirror opposite of a car buff. I see the automobile as a tool, not a work of art. No matter, even I was impressed by the stately look of the Star of India. It is a statement of pure form and superior craftmanship. It was worth the trip to Dundas Street to attend a pre-preview!
How did the other media feel? Just about same as me. The pre-preview attracted a couple of TV crews and a gaggle of photographers and reporters, all who seemed genuinely impressed by the AGO's rolling stock.
The exhibition (sponsored in part by Scotiabank) opens to the public on November 20, 2010 and runs to April 3, 2011. Assuming that the pre-preview has done its job then you alreadly know that, don't you?
CUTLINES
Top: The Star of India - Blackberry photo of the 1934 Rolls Royce
Middle: Haema Sivanessan,AGO Special Project Assistant, is interviewed by the CBC beside the Star of India.
Bottom: The Patiala Necklace. Exhibit within the upcoming Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts

Thoughts on walking the chicken filled streets of Key West

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Watching the Americans - but not understanding what we see

IT is the Canadian thing. We - all of us Canadians - watch the US. We know all the states. We know all the shows. We know all the trends. But, we don't necessarily understand fully what we are seeing.
We spent a week in the Florida Keys. We dove. We saw plays. We toured art galleries. We could have gone to a Florida pig race, but, went for a nature walk near Marathon instead.
We saw a bumper sticker asking why if they call it Tourist Season, how come Conkers are allowed to shoot them (Conkers are the real Florida Key residents).
We also noticed but failed to comprehend why:
* No one in Key West talked about the hundreds of chickens that live in parks, on people's lawns and in culverts
* No one in Key West seemed to notice that many of the cruise ship tourists visiting the port are seriously obese and had trouble making it across an intersection before the light turned red!
* No one in the Keys seemed to know that the US is fighting in two Wars. No signs of encouragement, no fund raising drives, no flags at half-mast, no mention on the TV, radio or local newspapers
* No one talked about the Gulf Oil Spill
* No one talked about cruelty to cats (trained cats perform at the daily Sunset Busker festival along the Key West town dock)
* No one talked about how you can't buy Ding Dongs and Twinkies in any of Key West's food markets.
CUTLINE: An acquired taste - attending a Florida pig race. Photo by Dave Tollington

WW1 expert Dr Tim Cook in Toronto for one-day only

Just in time for REMEMBRANCE DAY
Great War historian and award-winning author,
TIM COOK is in Toronto Monday, November 8th to talk to media about the Great War and his new book, The Madman and The Butcher

The Sensational Wars of Sam Hughes and General Arthur Currie

Great War expert Tim Cook, winner of the 2009 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction for his last book, Shock Troops, returns to Canada's literary arena with a new book that addresses Canada's role in the First World War. The book explores the need to place blame for the terrible loss of life, our nation's discomfort with war heroes and a war of reputations that has raged on since the guns fell silent more than 90 years ago.
Cook's The Madman and The Butcher (Allan Lane Canada, Penguin Group (Canada) is a powerful double biography that intertwines the relationship of Sam Hughes, Canada's war minister during the first 2 ½ years of the First World War and the internationally renowned Arthur Currie, the Canadian Corp commander recognized as a brilliant general, morally brave with a keen eye on solving the challenges of trench warfare.
As the Great War historian at the Canadian War Museum, and author of two previous books about the First World War (At the Sharp End, Shock Troops) Tim Cook makes a timely and fascinating interview as he explores Canadian war history. The Madman and The Butcher follows exposes one of the most shocking and highly publicized libel trials in Canada history; covering controversy, personalities and egos, and the mistakes and decisions that shaped Canada's valiant efforts, defeats and in the end its brave victories of the Great War.

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Penguin Press Release About The Book
Publication Date: September 25,2010


Praise for Tim Cook’s National Bestseller AT THE SHARP END
“The mark of a good historian is finding new ways to tell a tale that we thought we knew, and Cook has that quality in spades.”—The Globe and Mail
THE MADMAN AND THE BUTCHER
The Sensational Wars of Sam Hughes and General Arthur Currie
TIM COOK

From the winner of the 2009 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction

Set against the backdrop of Canadians fighting in the Great War, based on newly uncovered sources and written by the country’s Great War expert, The Madman and the Butcher is an engaging narrative that explores questions of Canada’s role in the war, the need to find victims for the terrible blood loss, the nation’s discomfort with heroes, and the war of reputations that has raged on since the guns fell silent more than 90 years ago.
Sir Arthur Currie is Canada’s greatest battlefield general, having achieved international fame as Canadian Corps commander during the Great War. He was recognized by Canada’s allies as a brilliant general, morally brave, and with a keen eye for solving the challenges of trench warfare. But there were no bloodless victories on the battlefields of the Western Front, and even elite fighting forces like Currie’s Corps suffered horrendous casualties. Who was to blame for Canada’s 60,000 dead?
Sir Sam Hughes, Canada’s war minister during the first two and a half years of the conflict, was erratic, outspoken, and regarded by many as insane. Yet this madman was an expert on the war. He attacked Currie’s reputation in the war’s aftermath, accusing him of being a butcher. The Canadian general, after leading his forces for four years and suffering from what would now be recognized as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, could not fight back. Many Canadians believed that Arthur Currie was a callous murderer of his own men. Currie was forced to claw back his reputation, battle against a nefarious rumour campaign by Sam Hughes and others, and eventually fight one of the most shocking and highly publicized court cases in Canadian history.
Based on newly uncovered sources, The Madman and the Butcher is a powerful double biography of Sam Hughes and Arthur Currie and the story of one of the most shocking and highly publicized libel trials in Canadian history.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Tim Cook is the Great War historian at the Canadian War Museum, as well as an adjunct professor at Carleton University. His books have won numerous awards, including the 2009 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction for Shock Troops. He lives in Ottawa with his family.

PRAISE FOR TIM COOK:
“Serving solders and military historians should consider themselves lucky to have Tim Cook, himself a war studies graduate and an accomplished military historian.”
—Canadian Army Journal

THE MADMAN AND THE BUTCHER by Tim Cook
Non-Fiction/ISBN: 9780670064038/ $36 / Hardcover / 400 pages

To arrange an in-person interview on Monday, Nov. 8th and receive a copy of the book, please contact:

Stephen Weir & Associates
Linda Crane 905-257-6033 c. 416-727-0112 cranepr@cogeco.ca
Stephen Weir 416-489-5868 c. 416-801-3101 stephen@stephenweir.com

The Roadside Shark - Florida Keys' marketing answer to the Giant Gorillia

Fishers of Men
GIANT SHARKS TAKE BITE OUT OF TOURIST WALLETS
(OR SO THEY HOPE)
In the early days of PR and marketing one of the big bold milestone steps was the invention of the sandwich board. Put a huge advertising sign on the front and back of some hapless homeless man and have him stand around busy corners. Was a novel approach and it worked ... until every downtown store had their own walking signs. Message was lost in the crowd, and getting across the street was a chore.
Sandwich boards evolved. Clowns handing out flyers, fuzzy animal characters waving at the cars, life-sized robots in shop doors and windows. In the suburbs, merchants started thinking big. Inflatable Air Dancing Men, Giant, blow-up gorillas in the parking lots and blimps tethered to store ceilings.

The evolution of the signboard has made a science out attracting the attention of consumer. Unfortunately, the science of satisfying consumer demands has not. Just because a store has a great sign doesn't mean that once inside there are good prices, unique items for sale -- sometimes it is just the opposite.
In the Florida Keys, there is but one highway that runs from Key West at the southern tip of Florida, 140 miles north to Key Largo. It is a busy highway and vacationers are wont to barrel down Route 1 as fast as they can. Merchants, looking to slow down motorists and hopefully take bite out of their wallets have updated Giant Gorilla strategy with something befitting the Keys.
Just when I thought it was safe to drive the length of the Keys I spotted a number of over sized creatures of the deep, attached or parked in front of stores, from Mile Marker 1 right to 140.

I took these posted pictures (save for Betsy the Lobster which I linked from Sandwich Girls' Flickr account:http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandwichgirl/4236245532/) in October 2010 while driving the length of Route #1.

CUTLINES:
Top: Over sized Great White Shark head is a daily Kodak moment at the Key West Aquarium. When the cruise ships are in there is a feeding frenzy of photographers
Second from top: Fibreglass Hammerhead wears a tank, weight belt and goggles at Wahoo's seaside restaurant in Islamorada. Very successful in pulling in tourists (we ate there!).
Third from top:Hanging plastic shark at the Islamorada charter fishing dock reels them in (including my wife Maria Nenadovich - the model - and me - the photographer).
Second from bottom: Tilden's dive shop in Marathon has a giant fibreglass Angel Fish in its parking lot.
Bottom: Sandwich Girl's Betsy the Lobster. Fibreglass giant spiny lobster now in front of the Rain Barrel Artists Village in Islamorada. Statue is 30-foot-tall and 40-foot-long

LATE BREAKING PLASTIC SHARK NEWS FROM GEORGETOWN

Just returned from a dive writing trip to the Cayman Islands While in Georgetown (the capitol) taking a surface break, I chanced upon a fibreglass shark outfront of a downtown bar. Not sure how Mr. Jaws lost his right flipper (bite off by an even bigger drunk scuba diver?). Picture taken May 3, 2011

Literary Circle - Bravo TV taping. Free. Giller Prize short list

Stephen Weir here
This is an invitation for late Friday afternoon. Tomorrow. Books. Giller. Bravo TV. Toronto.
The thing about most authors is that they are great writers but in person .... yawn. However, when you have a seasoned interviewer, like Seamus O'Regan, who can ask the hard question, suddenly an hour with five top authors becomes the high point of the week...!
Tomorrow afternoon, 5:30. Seamus O'Regan (Canada AM) will be interviewing the five short-listed Giller Prize authors.
I was at the last taping it was an unforgettable hour of literature (seriously). It is at the Masonic Temple (Yonge at Davenport). It is free but seating is limited. Email gillercircle@ctv.ca.
I will be there. Hope you can make it.
The 5 authors and their books are:
David Bergen THE MATTER WITH MORRIS, Phyllis Bruce Books/HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
Alexander MacLeod for his short story collection LIGHT LIFTING, Biblioasis Sarah Selecky for her short story collection THIS CAKE IS FOR THE PARTY, Thomas Allen Publishers
Johanna Skibsrud for her novel THE SENTIMENTALISTS, Gaspereau Press Kathleen Winter for her novel ANNABEL, House of Anansi Press

A Night of Literary Non-Fiction

IAN BROWN to headline IFOA's REAL LIFE: A Night of Literary Non-Fiction

Friday, Oct. 29th at 8:00 p.m.
Lakeside Terrace, York Quay Centre at Harbourfront

Winner of The Charles Taylor Prize now Canada's most highly acclaimed non-fiction author

TORONTO, Oct. 21 /CNW/ - Multiple book award winner Ian Brown is the most successful literary non-fiction writer Canada has ever produced. In 2010, his book, The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for His Disabled Son (Random House Canada), swept all of the major non-fiction prizes in the country. In addition to winning the 2010 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, Brown's book won the B.C. National Book Award and the Trillium Book Award, and the accolades keep coming: the book is shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award, to be announced in November.

WHO:
Author Ian Brown, winner of the 2010 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, appears at Harbourfront's esteemed International Festival of Authors. Ian Brown joins fellow non-fiction writers Charles Foran, Charlotte Gray and poet Meaghan Strimas. Each will read from their most recent works. The evening is hosted by non-fiction author Larry Gaudet.

WHAT:
Ian Brown will read from his award-winning book The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for his Disabled Son.

Born with a genetic mutation so rare that perhaps 300 people around the world live with it, Ian Brown's son, at age twelve, weighs only 54 pounds, wears diapers, can't speak and needs to wear special cuffs on his arms so that he can't harm himself. "Sometimes watching him," Brown writes, "is like looking at the man in the moon - but you know there is actually no man there. But if Walker is so insubstantial, why does he feel so important? What is he trying to show me?" The author's journey takes him into deeply touching and troubling territory. "All I really want to know is what goes on inside his off-shaped head," he writes, "But every time I ask, he somehow persuades me to look into my own."

WHY:
This is the IFOA's signature Non-Fiction event. Charles Taylor Prize winner Ian Brown, Charles Taylor Prize Founder Noreen Taylor and Charles Taylor Foundation trustee, Dr. David Staines are available for interviews before and after the event.

WHEN: Friday, October 29, 2010 at 8:00 p.m.

WHERE: Lakeside Terrace, York Quay Centre, Toronto

TICKETS: $18.00 Available online in advance. Seating is limited. www.readings.org

Previous Winners of the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction:
2000 Wayne Johnston for Baltimore's Mansion: A Memoir
2002 Carol Shields for Jane Austen
2004 Isabel Huggan for Belonging: Home Away from Home
2005 Charles Montgomery for The Last Heathen: Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia
2006 J.B. MacKinnon for Dead Man in Paradise
2007 Rudy Wiebe for Of this Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest
2008 Richard Gwyn for John A.: The Man Who Made Us
2009: Tim Cook for Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917-1918, Volume Two
2010: Ian Brown for The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for His Disabled Son

The Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction is presented annually by the Charles Taylor Foundation with support in 2010 from its partners: AVFX, Ben McNally Books, BookTelevision and Bravo!, Canada Newswire, CTV, The Globe and Mail, Le Meridien King Edward Hotel, Quill & Quire publications, and Windfields Farm.

For more information about The Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, and Ian Brown's award winning book, please follow links at www.thecharlestaylorprize.ca and follow on Twitter @taylorprize.

For further information:

Media are requested to confirm their attendance and/or interview requests with Stephen Weir & Associates:

Stephen Weir: 416-489-5868 cell: 416-801-3101 stephen@stephenweir.com
Linda Crane: 905-257-6033 cell: 416-727-0112 cranepr@cogeco.ca

A nation of photographers and a nation of models

DYING TO BE IN THE PICTURE

Canadian master photographer Ed Burtynsky got it half right while speaking at a Contact Photography Festival event when he told the media that Canada has become a nation of photographers. Cell Phone cameras. Cheap high def video cams. The explosive rise of the digital camera. Twitter Vids. You Tubes. Facebook. Canadians are documentary every aspect of life in this country.
Burtynsky, a Ryerson Polytechnical Institute grad, is world famous for his landscape photographs, so he should be excused for not mentioning the other half of the equation. Canadian has become a nation of models!
For every person who carries a camera to a public event, there is an equal or greater number of people willing and waiting to poise for that Kodak Moment. During Scotiabank Caribana 2010, 600 media, most of them videographers and photographers, registered to be on the parade route.
While the parade marshals find the photographers annoying in the least and downright disruptive in the pejorative, the barely clad dancers didn't mind stopping the parade to constantly pose for pictures. Within days of the Parade over 3,300 YouTube videos (marked Caribana) had been posted and 24,000 pictures (marked Caribana) posted on Flickr. And Facebook? 100,000 jpgs and counting.
It is not just events where body beautiful rules. On Saturday October 23rd my photographer son Andrew and myself took our cameras to Trinity Bellwood Park where 6,000 peoples drenched themselves in fake blood and shuffled through the park and into the streets of Toronto in the annual Zombie Walk.
There were hundreds and hundreds of photographers following the moaning, stumbling rag tag parade. The zombies had worked hard on their make-up and wanted to be photographed. Ever had a corpse ask you to take her picture? I have.
The Zombie Walk has no sponsors (save beyond a Henry's Camera portrait booth), and no actual raison d'etre. But because of the growing Yin and the Yang between people's need to be seen and people's need to be camera carrying voyeurs there is no stomping on Toronto's undead parade.
CUTLINES
Top - Complete stranger asks Zombies to deadpan it for his camera. (But he still told them to say "Cheese")
Bottom - Andrew Weir's picture of the Zombie Parade - Trinity Bellwood Park.