Vintage matches spark burning passion for West Broadway phillumenist

West Broadway resident Nicole McLennan doesn’t have anywhere near the number of matchbooks as Guinness World Record-holder Ed Brassard but like her fellow phillumenist — the term given to people who keep match-related paraphernalia — she also took up the hobby at a young age.

David Hockney, iconic British artist known for his colorful landscapes and pool scenes, dies at 88

LONDON (AP) — David Hockney, a treasured British artist whose paintings of shimmering pools and colorful iPad drawings became icons of contemporary art, has died, his publicist said Friday. He was 88.

Over a seven-decade career, Hockney explored and reimagined classical portraiture, landscape painting and pop art, working in painting, collage, photography and digital drawing.

Hockney was born in the north of England but lived much of his life in Southern California, making its sun-drenched suburban views a major motif.

Later in life he returned to Europe, finding renewed inspiration in the wooded hills of his native county of Yorkshire and the fields and trees of France’s Normandy region. One of the most popular and critically lauded British artists of his generation, his works sold for record prices at auction.

HBC charter goes on display at Manitoba Museum

After months of petitions, legal scrutiny and political pressure, the 1670 Hudson’s Bay Company Royal Charter has formally arrived at the Manitoba Museum, marked by a ceremony including many notable Canadian and Indigenous political leaders.

“It’s with a profound sense of gratitude and humility that I stand before you today as we recognize the gifting of the HBC Royal Charter, together with our consortium partners,” said Dorota Blumczynska, CEO of the Manitoba Museum.

“Today marks an opportunity that is not to redefine the past, but to better understand it, and to help us use it to build a more just and inclusive future.”

The 356-year-old document, which not only birthed HBC, but effectively laid a foundation for colonial Canada itself, attracted new controversies in the last year or so. After years of bleeding at the bottom line, HBC announced in March 2025 that it would begin liquidating its stores across the country and selling off its assets to pay off creditors.

What's up: Kilterpalooza, Artists’ Studio Tour, jazz music, comedian Josh Johnson

KilterpaloozaKilter Brewing Co., 450 Rue DeschambaultSaturday, noon to 11 p.m.FreeKilter Brewing Co. celebrates eight years of beers this weekend with the annual Kilterpalooza taking place at the St. Boniface brewery on Saturday from noon to 11 p.m.

The event is more than just a release of new/limited-run craft beer — although it’s that as well. There’s live music throughout the day (including Tiana and George Foreman & the Grills, as well as tunes being spun by DJ Dad) plus daytime activities (noon to 6 p.m.) including a tie-dye station, temporary tattoos, outdoor games (Connect 4, giant Jenga, corn hole and tic-tac-toe), prizes and face painting.

A vendor market kicks off at noon, running to 6 p.m. or later featuring 1882 Fruit Based Hot Sauce, Happyland Print Shop, Rewind Vintage, Victory Pints and others, including Kilter’s own beer and merch store.

On the drinks front, Kilter is rolling out a bevy of new brews (six to be precise) including the Birthday Cake Oat Cream Pale Ale (featuring two kinds of hops, as well as vanilla and milk sugar), the Pickle Pils (brewed with Primo’s Deli pickle brine) and the Soak Up the Sun Hazy IPA, a collaboration with Calgary’s the Establishment Brewing Co. that features a range of dry and cryogenic hops. There will also be cocktails and cocktail slushies as well as plenty of non-alcoholic options.

Sisler program creating new generation of animators

The characters start as crude shapes and stand-ins, then take on form. Your Elsa, Miles Morales or Buzz Lightyear are born, but move only in key poses, like a picture book.

Yiddish fest highlights comfort of knish crafting

For Sara Kasdan, the author of the mid-century ethnic best-seller Love and Knishes, the titular dough pocket was a pathway to everlasting romance via the stomach, assured to get the cook’s name into a man’s heart “faster … and stay longer.”

Winnipegger earns Tony for leading role in Broadway production of Ragtime

Winnipeg’s Joshua Henry was on top of the musical theatre world Sunday at Radio City Music Hall, winning the Tony Award for best performance by an actor in a leading role for his performance in the Broadway revival of Ragtime.

Pride of place

Staycation: The Art of Being Here features more than 100 Manitoba- related artworks from the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq collection, spanning the past 50 years. These pieces reveal how the places around us are layered with memory, story and lived experience.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll spotlight works from this eclectic exhibition, each one offering a new way of seeing home. Experience it in person and enjoy some staycation time at the gallery, on view until December.

Dee Barsy. My Four Grandmothers, 2017. Acrylic on gessoed birch panel. Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Acquired with funds from the Winnipeg Rh Foundation Inc., 2017-531. Photo: Serhii Gumenyuk. Artwork sponsored by Vic and Marlene Janzen.

My Four Grandmothers was commissioned for the 2017 WAG exhibition, INSURGENCE/RESURGENCE. Dee Barsy (Ojibwe) is a visual artist and a member of Skownan First Nation, Manitoba (Treaty 2). This vibrant painting depicts Barsy’s interconnected relationships between her four grandmothers, her adopted and biological kinships. Barsy uses contrasting and saturated colours to symbolize the diverse spirit of each of her grandmothers, shown in the four separated but intermingled entities. Within the reflection of these relationships, she reflects on ideas of grief, loss, death and reunification.

Shakespeare in the Ruins’ As You Like It its most pleasurable production in a while

One likes to imagine the title of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It signalled some capitulation on the part of the Bard, to keep the pastoral comedy extra light.

Shakespeare in the Ruins director looks to White Lotus for inspiration in musical comedy As You Like It

Is White Lotus showrunner Mike White a modern-day bard? The Folger Shakespeare Library has at least entertained the question.

After the first season of the Emmy-winning dark comedy aired in 2022, the Washington, D.C.-based institution published a guest post by Austin Tichenor which favourably compared the tropical HBO program — each season set in a different luxury resort — to The Tempest.

“There’s something wonderfully contained about The White Lotus. Unlike other epic and sprawling miniseries, this six-episode character study feels surprisingly intimate, like the five acts of a Shakespeare play,” wrote Tichenor, the co-artistic director of California’s Reduced Shakespeare Company.

“And while there’s no actual storm, the sounds of wind, waves, and surf punctuate the proceedings, adding tension and underscoring the turbulence characters are going through.”

What’s up: Brian Goldman, Stephanie Ballard, WUFF, Pride, MayWorks book launch

Dr. Brian Goldman book launchMcNally Robinson Booksellers, 1120 Grant Ave.Tuesday, 7 p.m.Free admissionFifteen years after writing The Night Shift: Real Life in the Heart of the E.R., his account of working overnight in the emergency room (ER) at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, Dr. Brian Goldman is back with a chronicle of what the medical landscape is like today.

Goldman is a bestselling author, ER doctor and host of CBC Radio’s White Coat, Black Art. His new book The Casino Shift: Stories from an ER on the Edge, published in February, goes hour by hour through the shorter overnight shifts (the “casino shifts” of the book’s title), detailing the types of situations faced by ER doctors and patients. He also sums up the advances in technology that have helped patients, as well as the increasing complexity of patient cases.

McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location will host Goldman on Tuesday at 7 p.m. for the launch of The Casino Shift, where he’ll be joined in conversation by Winnipeg doctor, educator and bestselling author Dr. Jillian Horton (We Are All Perfectly Fine). The event, co-presented by the Alan Klass Health Humanities program at the UM Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, is free to attend and will also be available on McNally Robinson’s YouTube page.

— Ben Sigurdson

Plug In gallery’s new executive director happy to be leading ‘amazing institution’

It’s been a busy week for Nadja Pelkey, the newest executive director of the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art.

After landing in Winnipeg on Saturday, marking her arrival with an at-home banquet of Mexican cuisine and champagne, Pelkey was immediately thrust into the centre of civic conversation Tuesday, attending the Mayor’s Luncheon for the Arts on her second day on the job.

“It’s funny. I was talking to a couple friends of friends of mine at other organizations, and typically, when you come into a new organization, a new institution, there’s a sort of lull in which you can gain your footing and learn before getting very involved,” says Pelkey, who last worked as a programmer and curator with Art Windsor-Essex in Ontario.

Not only was Pelkey in mingle-mode within hours of starting on the Plug In payroll, but the organization’s 11th executive director’s first week also coincided with a “blockbuster” exhibition, Sarah Anne Johnson’s House on Fire, opening tonight at 460 Portage Ave.

Winnipeg artist’s House on Fire chronicles fallout of grandmother’s MK Ultra experience

In the late 1950s, Velma Orlikow sought treatment for postpartum depression at the Allen Memorial Institute at McGill University in Montreal.

Later, it would be discovered that she was unknowingly enrolled in the secret CIA research program now known as MK Ultra, where she was the victim of brainwashing experiments at the hands of Dr. Ewen Cameron. She was injected with LSD and forced to listen to Cameron’s voice on tape for hours.

In the 1980s, Orlikow and eight other victims sued the CIA, which settled out of court.

Winnipeg visual artist Sarah Anne Johnson, Orlikow’s granddaughter, explores this difficult family history through her long-running series of work House on Fire, which is on view now at Plug In ICA.

Business, arts communities come together to honour artists

Artists and arts administrators weren’t the only ones who filled the RBC Convention Centre Tuesday for the Mayor’s Luncheon for the Arts, hosted by the Winnipeg Arts Council.

Winnipeg artist nominated for theatre prize for second straight year

For the second consecutive year, Winnipeg’s Dasha Plett is nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore award for outstanding sound design.

The 2026 field of nominees, announced Monday by the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts, was drawn from eligible theatre, dance and opera productions in the Ontario city.

Last year, Plett — a co-founder with Gislina Patterson of local performance collective We Quit Theatre — was nominated for her work on Roberto Zucco, a production by the pre-eminent downtown Toronto queer theatre Buddies in Bad Times.

This time around, the theatre artist is nominated for her work on Take Rimbaud by playwright-performer Susanna Fournier, a “performance poem imagining the worlds of Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Sylvia Plath, Sappho and post-art school malaise,” per Buddies in Bad Times.