Montreal celebrates contemporary art while Toronto raises funds for elephants

Printemps du MAC in support of Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal

Recently in Montreal, young art patrons partied in support of the city’s beloved contemporary art museum, which, it was recently announced, will undergo an ambitious expansion under the direction of Saucier+Perrotte Architectes come 2019. Much of the museum’s concrete façade will be replaced with glass, lightening the fortress-like front and nearly doubling the museum’s space for exhibitions. The function on April 13, called ELO LEO, with its geometric and contemporary take on 1950s Beat culture, served as an homage to Leonard Cohen and provided party guests a last look at the museum’s wildly successful Leonard Cohen – Une brèche en toute chose/A Crack in Everything exhibition. With tickets priced at just $175 a pop, and a bright, young and connected committee steering it – this year Alexandra Mohsen of Ssense and Stefanie Stergiotis of Transat A.T. co-chaired – Printemps du MAC has become a must-attend for the city’s next generation of museum givers, young professionals and creatives, who together since the to-do’s inception in 2006 have raised an impressive $1.2-million for the Musée Foundation, which supports MAC acquisitions, exhibitions and education initiatives.

Holt Renfrew Celebrates Knot on My Planet, Toronto

Knot on My Planet is a digital campaign best known by its hashtag, #knotonmyplanet. Its focus is fusing fashion and digital influence to call attention to elephant poaching and the ivory. On April 12, under the Frank Gehry-designed Douglas fir-clad staircase in the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Walker Court, a papier-mâché elephant of epic proportions stood as a fitting centrepiece for a dinner given by model and Knot on My Planet ambassador Doutzen Kroes and Holt Renfrew’s brand and creative strategy director Alexandra Weston. One hundred and thirty-or-so dressed-to-impress Holt Renfrew clients and a gaggle of au-courant models including Winnie Harlow and Jordan Barrett were in attendance, all out to raise funds for the cause, which supports The Elephant Crisis Fund, an initiative of Save The Elephants.

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