Many Lives: Picture Frames in Context Conference

The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) will host a two-day conference on the history and conservation of picture frames. The conference will take place at the AGO on Thursday, May 2, and Friday, May 3, 2024. 

This conference is co-organized by the museum’s curatorial and conservation departments to promote inter- and multi-disciplinary dialogue. The AGO is home to an important collection of historic frames, and a project is currently underway at AGO to catalogue and conserve this collection to make the collection more accessible for study and use. In light of this project, the symposium aims to present current research that contextualizes frames in their many incarnations, including research on frame makers, framing traditions, frames’ afterlives, frame collections, pairings of frames to paintings, artists’ frames, the commercial history of framing, and related topics.

Keynote lectures will be delivered by Lynn Roberts, acclaimed frame historian and publisher of The Frame Blog, and Hubert Baija, recently-retired longtime conservator of frames at the Rijksmuseum.

Pictured: Italian Tabernacle Frame, 1600s, tortoiseshell, bone or ivory and wood. Gift from a private collector (94/994).