( Saidye Bronfman Award recipients, 1997 - 2001 )

Excellence: Saidye Bronfman Award Recipients, 1997-2001 celebrates the Work of the five most recent Saidye Bronfman Award recipients. As well as providing annual Award recipients with a cash prize as well as recognition by their peers and the public, the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation provides funds that allow the Canadian Museum of Civilization to purchase works by the Award recipients and the finalists. To date, over 100 works have been purchased for the Museum's collection. Many of these works have been seen in the previous touring exhibitions, Masters of the Crafts and Transformation: Prix Saidye Bronfman Award, 1977-1996.

Excellence: Saidye Bronfman Award Recipients, 1997-2001 includes a guitar by William (Grit) Laskin, Powers of Observation, 1998, that was commissioned by the Museum. This work features Laskin's celebrated inlay work that features a story of a sculptor. Through this story, Laskin questions the veracity of traditional conduits of information, and the importance of learning from "seeing." Similarly, Marcel Marois' tapestry, Analogie-Temps, 1983-84, updates the storytelling nature of medieval tapestry to address contemporary issues, such as the environment. Marois takes images from mass media sources and manipulates them in ways that make their messages more and less clear simultaneously, prompting us to question how and what we see.

Susan Low-Beer's Still Dances VIII, 1991 deals with images of women - taken from historical and contemporary sources - that the artist has segmented and reassembled. The juxtaposition of the fragments prompts the viewer to formulate new narratives about the combination of characters and evokes feelings of vulnerability, compassion and fragility. The assembly of different sources of inspiration occurs in Peter Fleming's work as well. Side Table that was designed in 1985, but not finished until 1990, and Writing Desk, 1997 demonstrate a shift that occurred in Fleming's work in the 1990s. The earlier work demonstrates an exuberance based in postmodern aesthetics whereas the writing table shows Fleming's interest in scouring design history from the Renaissance to mid-century Modernism and then synthesizing these various influences into a final work.

The 25th recipient of the Saidye Bronfman Award, Leopold Foulem, is represented by three works that reflect some of his concerns from 1988 to 2000. Abstraction 5847, 1999-2000, is a reduction of ceramics to its most basic - a stereotypical form and colour. Cylindrical Blue and White Teapot in Silvered Mounts, 1995-1996, utilizes commercially made decals to allude to traditional decorative motifs and addition of metal mounts to Asian ceramics in Europe, while Generic Cup and Saucer, 1988, questions what a cup and saucer is.

The Canadian Museum of Civilization joins its other partners in the Saidye Bronfman Award - the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts - in the celebration of the Award's 25th Anniversary.