—Relative Projection of Earthly Time: Penelope Stewart & Swapnaa Tamhane to open in February 2027

RCA Curator/Administrator Sonia Bazar will be presenting Relative Projection of Earthly Time: Penelope Stewart & Swapnaa Tamhane in early 2027. Stewart and Tamhane’s works move between the personal and the public, speaking to injustice and rebirth, pain and the light that can emerge from it. Together, their practices examine entangled conditions of grief, agency, and futurity — considering how temporal and material processes register histories of rupture while opening onto forms of repair.                      Sonia Bazar (she/they) is a Montreal-born artist working out of her studio in NDG. She holds an MFA in Photography from Concordia University and is currently a PhD candidate in Art Education.           Working across sculpture, photography, and poetry, Bazar’s practice explores alien landscapes and the body’s relationship to space. Research has always been central to her work, shaping both materials and process — and in recent years, she has begun treating research itself as an art form, weaving it directly into installations.           Her work has been exhibited internationally, including as part of the zine Repair Manuals and Cosmic Sounds: Self-Publishing to Heal the Entire Universe at the Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona. Her current project, Back River, moves through grief, life, and death within the framework of Montreal’s oldest Jewish cemetery. A new iteration of the project, curated by Bazar in collaboration with fellow artists, will show in May 2027 at the Maison de la Culture Ahuntsic-Cartierville.

—Nuclear Scar: Past, Present, Future

Continuing his variegated and compelling series of posters on social justice issues, RCA member Derwyn Goodall’s commemorative poster for the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster exhibition — Nuclear Scar: Past, Present, Future — offers a profound reminder of the potential dangers of nuclear power. Derwyn was invited to participate in this exhibition by Prof. Oleg Veklenco of the Association of Graphic Designers ‘4th Block’ in Kharkiv, Ukraine. The exhibition’s curators also included Prof. Ilya Pavlov (Austria), Prof. Lars Harmsen (Germany), and Prof. Byoung-il Sun (South Korea). The first exhibitions will take place in Ukraine in 2026, with venues in Kharkiv, Kyiv, and Lviv. The project will then continue internationally, with confirmed presentations in Graz and Los Angeles.

—New RCA members, scholarship winners and medalists

We’re pleased to announce that at this year’s Awards Dinner in Montreal on November 15, 2025, we inducted eleven new members, awarded three CD Howe Scholarships, one Ernest Annau Travel Study Scholarship, one Arthur Erickson Travel Study Scholarship and two RCA Medals. Our new members are Majid Abbasi, Dayna Danger, Yurko Gutsulyak, Ben Johnson, Lyne Lapointe, David Peters, Skawennati, Leesa Streifler, Zainub Verjee, Richard York, and Chloe Wise. Our CD Howe Scholarship winners this year are Ella Ethier van Blokland, Visual Arts/Arts visuels, John Abbott College/Collège John Abbott; Jane Rochette, École d’art, Université Laval; and Mathieu DeBlois, NAD, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. We have one Ernest Annau Travel Study Scholarship winner this year, Andréanne Hébert, École de design, l’Université du Québec à Montréal. And our Arthur Erickson Travel Study Scholarship winner is Shauntae Vassell, McEwen School of Architecture, Laurentian University. We awarded two RCA Medals, to Peter Jacobs, RCA, Professor Emeritus, University of Montreal and past Vice President, Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and to Phyllis Lambert, RCA, Founding Director Emeritus, Canadian Centre for Architecture.

—New Governor General’s Visual and Media Arts Laureates

The 2025 Governor General’s Visual and Media Arts Laureates, recently inducted by Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon, Governor General of Canada, are Daina Augaitis, Thaddeus Holownia, Bruce LaBruce, Kent Monkman, Yin-me Moon, Peter Pierobon, Clive Robertson, and Sandra Rodriguez. We congratulate all the winners.

— King Charles III Coronation Medal recipients

In January 2025, following an invitation by our Patron, the Governor General of Canada, we announced the awarding of twenty-three King Charles III Coronation Medals. We received a mandate to administer the nomination process in a manner that made sense for our organization. We thus created a fair and transparent open call to members to put names forward and are happy to report that every nomination was successful. We framed the King Charles III Coronation Medal as essentially a service award for individuals who had admirably served the RCA or more generally ‘the arts’ in a manner worthy of recognition. Recipients are: Gesta Abols, John Arnott, Robert Beck, Derek Michael Besant, Diane Leclair Bisson, Thomas Arthur Cannell, Karen Anderson Cantine, Ginette Caron, Luc Courchesne, Christos Dikeakos, Gene Dub, Daniel Fortin, Peter Jacobs, Barrie Jones, Albert Leclerc, Rod McDonald, Judith Mary Nasby, Helga Plumb, Elsie Marion Sullivan, Robert Tombs, Colette Tougas, Hendrikus van Assen, and Barbara Vogel. Thank you to all nominators and congratulations to all medalists!  See press release here.

—Our new Ottawa location

On September 1, 2020, the RCA moved into its new office space at 50 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, the home of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Situated at the confluence of the Rideau Falls, and the Ottawa and Gatineau Rivers, this building, designed by architect Peter Spaull in 2000, has two purpose-built gallery spaces. We will present exhibitions beginning in the 2021–22 season, once social distancing is relaxed from the advisories established during the Covid-19 pandemic.