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As one of the top fine arts schools in Canada, we have a vital impact on culture both at home and abroad. We also host over 200 events a year, both on- and off-campus. Read our blog for all the latest Fine Arts stories, follow for breaking news on Twitter or find us on or Instagram.

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Media archive

As acknowledged experts in fields ranging from classical and popular music to art history, digital media, pop culture and so much more, our faculty are frequently in the news. Catch up on our expert opinions by visiting our media archive, which offers story briefs and links to media coverage.

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Orion Lecture with Carmen Aguirre, (Author, Actor & Playwright)
Orion Lecture Series: Memoir & Satire with Author, Actor & Playwright Carmen Aguirre Carmen Aguirre reads from her bestselling memoir Mexican Hooker #1: Art, Love, and Forgiveness After Trauma, and from her new play The Consent Club. Her reading will be followed by a question and answer period. Carmen Aguirre is an Electric Company Theatre Core Artist and Artistic Associate of New Play Development at The Stratford Festival. She has written and co-written over twenty-five plays, the #1international bestseller Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter (CBC Canada Reads winner), and its bestselling sequel, Mexican Hooker #1: Art, Love, and Forgiveness After Trauma. She is adapting Euripides’ Medea, Moliere’s The Learned Ladies for Toronto’s Factory Theatre, Linebaugh and Rediker’s The Many-Headed Hydra for The Stratford Festival, and writing Fire Never Dies for Electric Company. Carmen is a 2020 Siminovitch Prize finalist and a Studio 58 graduate. www.carmenaguirre.ca (Advisory: Some content deals with subject matter related to sexual assault.)
Orion Lecture: Turn it up! Music, citizenship and social change
Music is a powerful medium that crosses all cultures and boundaries, mobilizes movements and expresses the complex emotions of our times. This Orion Lecture (recorded Feb 12, 2022) offers an exciting exploration of how music is being used by youth activists’ movements in Sénégal and Indigenous peoples in Canada to enrich the lives of listeners and empower and affect social change. Orion guest Dr. Abdoulaye Niang presents on African rap, politics and the renewal of citizenship, followed by Ry Moran—UVic's inaugural associate university librarian on reconciliation—who discusses the relationship between music, truth, reconciliation and justice. School of Music professor Kirk McNally moderates this conversation that seeks to uncover the opportunities and challenges for music and musicians in both countries as we collectively work towards positive social change.
Art History & Visual Studies Orion Lecture: "Unmasking Meaning: Culture, Collection and Family"
This discussion about museums, conservation and decolonization, revolving around the Nulis Mask—a cultural object that now resides in the collection of the Ethnologisches Museum, but once belonged to the Newman family. Dr. Kim Dhillon (UVic's Dept of Visual Arts) moderates this conversation between Monika Zessnik (Curator of North American Collections, Ethnologisches Museum Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) and Carey Newman (UVic's Impact Chair in Indigenous Art Practices).
Orion Lecture: JB MacKinnon on "The Day The World Stops Shopping"
We can’t stop shopping. And yet we must. This is the consumer dilemma that noted author J.B. MacKinnon is addressing in this special Department of Writing Orion Lecture. The author of five books of nonfiction, MacKinnon is also an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, National Geographic and Atlantic, as well as the Best American Science and Nature Writing. His previous works are "The Once and Future World", a bestseller about rewilding the natural world; "The 100-Mile Diet" (with Alisa Smith), widely recognized as a catalyst of the local foods movement; "I Live Here" (with Mia Kirshner and artists Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge), about displaced people; and "Dead Man in Paradise", the story of a priest assassinated in the Dominican Republic, which won Canada’s highest prize for literary nonfiction.
Orion Lecture Series with curator Dr Fahmida Suleman
Since the late 19th century, museums have devoted attention to Islamic art and craft, encompassing objects dating from the seventh century to the present. Ideas about how the diverse and fascinating visual and material cultures of the Islamic world should be displayed have changed significantly over time, reflecting the broader trends in museum practice. In her Orion Lecture "Islamic Art & the Museum: A Curatorial Odyssey", Dr Fahmida Suleman and UVic Art History & Visual Studies professor Dr Marcus Milwright consider the varied roles and responsibilities of a curator of Islamic art, and the ways in which exhibition design can address the social, cultural and ethical concerns of contemporary audiences. A Q&A session facilitated by AHVS alumna, Dr. Atri Hatef Naiemi, follows the lecture.
Orion Lecture Series with artist Manuel Mathieu
The work of this Montreal-based artist exists at the intersection of racial, geographical & cultural identities. Manuel Mathieu holds an MFA from Goldsmith’s College (London). He has exhibited in England, Belgium, China, Canada, the United States, Spain, France, Morocco, and Martinique. His work is part of different collections, such as the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and the Museum of Fine Arts of Montreal. While Mathieu’s trajectory may be easily traced to his Haitian upbringing, his work articulates his positionality from a multitude of realities and perspectives. Recent exhibitions include the Perez Art Museum Miami, the Museum of Fine Arts of Montreal, The Power Plant (Toronto) and in group exhibitions at Musée d’art contemporain of Montreal, the Phi Foundation (Montréal), the Song Museum (Beijing) and the Kunstmuseum (Stuttgart).

See more videos from the Orion Lecture series playlist on YouTube.