What's On at the Library

This spring, we're partnering with one of Toronto’s best-loved museums, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), to bring Torontonians a series of events (interviews, round-tables, film screenings, interactive presentations and more) which explore the ways in which modern industry is changing our lives.

Using the AGO’s exhibition Impressionism in the Age of Industry: Monet, Pissarro and More as a springboard, our programming teams are presenting a series of coordinated talks that look at our modern lives through the lenses of housing, labour, transit and leisure.

Impressionism and a Radically-Changing World

It’s easy to forget when we look at the work by Impressionist artists how revolutionary their subjects were. So much of the writing on Impressionism has been focused on style, but the ways in which history played a key role in determining Impressionism as both an artistic and social movement have often been neglected. This is why the AGO’s exhibition is so important: it explores not only the stylistic changes, but also how the Industrial Revolution was a key impetus for the entire movement.

Impressionism was a revolutionary approach that was both nostalgic (looking back) and bleak (looking forward), coming into its own as European society was rapidly changing. It’s no accident that many Impressionist painters came from rural parts of the country: by documenting how the Industrial Revolution was transforming rural France, painters like Manet, Degas, Renoir, and Pissarro show us the effects of industrialization on the landscapes of the countryside and the ways in which rural communities were forever altered by shifting populations and work patterns.

L'Absinthe by Degas. Image in the public domain.

At the same time, Impressionism often showed bleak and less-than-idealistic views of the effects of rapid urbanization on cities such as Paris. In these cities, working class communities were often crowded into squalid neighbourhoods, alcoholism was rife, pollution was a growing problem and the ways in which people spent their hours of leisure began to change. Along with some of the bleaker images (L'Absinthe by Degas, for example or Manet’s La Prune), came other more idealistic images – and more widely associated with Impressionism – of leisurely afternoons in the park, on the beach, of sailboats or the wide boulevards of Paris with its citizens out strolling.

Today’s Industrial Revolution

In the same way that these artists showed their changing world in both positive and negative ways, we, too, are living at a time when Industrialization (what we often call “The Information Age”) is radically altering the ways in which we work, travel, spend free time and navigate the complex relationships we have with the concept of “home.” In both positive and negative ways.

In The Liveable City, the AGO presents four talks that bring unique insights into the way industry is changing the way we think about these key parts of our lives. Check out their talks on home, work, transportation and leisure throughout April 2019.

Events

For the Library series, key questions are explored through our upcoming events in many neighbourhood branches. These events are happening during both April and May. Some highlights include: 

Stephanie Land, author of Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive joins us to talk about her experience working deep in the underbelly of the American labour market. Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist and cultural commentator, calls Land’s book a story that “illuminates the struggles of poverty and single-motherhood, the unrelenting frustration of having no safety net, the ways in which our society is systemically designed to keep impoverished people mired in poverty, the indignity of poverty by way of unmovable bureaucracy, and people's lousy attitudes toward poor people…. an incredibly worthwhile read." Land will be discussing her memoir with Globe and Mail columnist and author of Shrewed, Liz Renzetti.

• Tuesday April 9, 7:00 pm at Toronto Reference Library, first floor Atrium.

Author and technology ethnographer, Alex Rosenblat, will be speaking in conversation with Voss Bednar about her book Uberland: How Algorithms are Rewriting the Rules of Work. Based on the author’s experience of riding 5,000 miles with Uber drivers in more than 25 cities in the US and Canada, the book explores not only how drivers experience the sophisticated algorithms that determine their work schedules and income, but also how these working conditions make these employees feel about their jobs. More worryingly, Rosenblat suggests a future where algorithms serve key management functions – faceless, human-less computer code which determines our successes or failures on the job.

• Friday May 24, 7:00 pm at Toronto Reference Library, first floor Atrium.

In addition, we have planned events on:

• Strip Malls and Public Spaces
• Gentrification
• Longevity at Work
• Tales of the TTC
• Tech Solutions to the Housing Crisis
• …and much more.

Visit the Home and Work: Today's Industrial Revolution webpage for the entire lineup. Check back often as we are adding in events regularly throughout March, April and into May!

We hope that our Home and Work series, as well as the AGO’s series, The Liveable City and their exhibition, Impressionism in the Age of Industry: Monet, Pissarro and More, will help shape the way you think about our changing lives, our changing cities and how the future is still in our hands.