The February First Thursday: We Are Each Other’s Muses

You’re invited to a very special AGO First Thursday on February 7: the very last one.

After six years, over 800 artists and 130,000 party-goers, we are drawing First Thursdays to a close as we make way for something new. Come party with us as we honour the groundbreaking event that made the AGO into a destination Toronto Life described as “the city’s hippest hangout” and brought incredible art experiences to Toronto’s late night scene.

The December First Thursday: A SOUL Revolution

Celebrate the opening of our exhibition, Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires, with a party guest-curated by members of AfroChic –Toronto’s annual community celebration of Afro-Canadian music, visual art, fashion and culture.  

The November First Thursday: Roll Up The Sleeves

November’s AGO First Thursday is designed to make you think (and feel) while experiencing amazing art, dancing to infectious beats and eating and drinking the night away. 

Inspired by Anthropocene, our current major exhibition that explores the impacts humans have had on our planet, November’s AGO First Thursday artists delve into the important issues of our time. Grab your friends and prepare to be motivated to make a difference and have a great time. 

The October First Thursday: #myspace

The AGO’s new exhibition, Anthropocene by Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, looks at human impact on our planet at a previously unregistered scale. The artists joining us for October’s First Thursday investigate similar territories, but in their own way, as spaces energized by the personal as much as the political.

The September First Thursday: Back to Basics

For the launch of our new season we go back to our founding principles: bringing together the next generation of local and contemporary artists across disciplines, who are establishing the new image for Toronto with art, sound and ideas. 

The May First Thursday: With or Without You

May First Thursday/Kusama combo tickets are now sold out.

Life’s work is an amalgamation of professional and personal fulfilments, although separation between the two categories isn’t always distinct. Ebbs and flows of this process was the poetic prompt behind the exhibition Mitchell/Riopelle: Nothing in Moderation, from which May First Thursday takes its inspiration.

The April First Thursday: In Living Colours

As the city revels in the Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors exhibition, First Thursday keeps exploring ways that artists create immersive worlds that either reflect or project onto the universes they inhabit. Nowhere is this more explicit than with the night’s headliner, Clara Venice, whose live performance integrates a virtual band of “hologlamorous personae”.

The March First Thursday: Down the Rabbit Hole

Manifest a new reality in the mirror of your mind! For this Yayoi Kusama-inspired First Thursday, the AGO partners with OCAD University’s Graduate Criticism & Curatorial Practice candidates to guide guests Down the Rabbit Hole—shedding the familiar and unlocking doors to unknown realms.

The February First Thursday: Shake It

Welcome to 2018! In the darkness of February we launch the new year of First Thursdays with hopes to release the past, and resist in a continuous present. 'Shake It' is a unique program, that looks at tradition in a contemporary way, and as always through the eyes of the artists. In all this we honour the season, and history of Carnival. 

The December First Thursday: Calling All Familiars

With the last First Thursday of 2017 we are excitedly looking at what has formed us, what moves us through the world, and what we have to let go. With exhibitions like Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry and the AIMIA/AGO Photography Prize, the notion of self-made, self-projected and manifest identities, what forms us is both generative and discerning.

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