Growing Cultures: Immigrants and Their Gardens featured a collection of 41 photographs produced by Vincenzo Pietropaolo, selected gardening implements and artifacts, and audio-visual documentation introducing a few of the countless immigrant gardeners who have enriched the neighbourhoods of Toronto. Building on research conducted by Professor Gerda Wekerle (Environmental Studies, York University) on urban agriculture and community gardens, the MHSO exhibition approached Toronto’s gardens as expressions of culture and reflections of the city’s cultural diversity, and it explored the ways in which gardens – individual and communal, utilitarian spaces and aesthetic creations – have helped immigrants maintain ties to their homelands and form new associations. Growing Cultures also demonstrated how immigrant gardens have transformed the urban landscape. The exhibition, which was supported by the Toronto Community Garden Network and Food Share, was on display from May 2000 to January 2002. A number of programs and lectures were offered in conjunction with the showing. In early 2003, Growing Cultures was mounted in the Odessa Woolfolk Gallery at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Birmingham, Alabama as part of the Salute to Canada festival, an event sponsored by the Institute and the Birmingham International Festival.
Curator: Dr. Elizabeth McLuhan (MHSO staff)
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