Close Looking is an online discussion series that invites people to spend time with a single work from the AGO Collection - observing its details, discussing its creation, its history and the artist’s intention through multiple senses and perspectives. Connecting art, access and learning, it’s a series that clears a space for us to appreciate the role that artists play in revealing and even shaping the world in which we live. 

Join Caroline Shields, Associate Curator and Head of European Art, for a close look at a recent AGO acquisition: Sunlight and Showers (c. 1901-1912) by Swedish artist Anna Boberg. A pioneering woman and artist, Boberg called herself a “polar researcher” and spent the last thirty years of her career painting the Lofoten Islands in the Norwegian Arctic. We’ll plunge into the depths of this seascape, examining how Boberg combines an impressionist passion for observation of atmospheric effects with a haunting poeticism. It’s on view now in the Richard Barry Fudger Memorial Gallery on Level 1 of the AGO.