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PHOTO: U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM
Arts and Culture
“You Are Sharing the Load! A
Hereditarily Ill Person Costs
50,000 Reichsmarks on Average
up to the Age of Sixty,” reproduced
in a high school biology
textbook by Jakob Graf. The
image illustrates Nazi propaganda
on the need to prevent
births of the “unfit.”
La Vendemmia 2008 in the heart of Little Italy
Spend some time in one of Ottawa’s oldest
and most close-knit communities this month to
eat, drink and make merry in honour of the
bounty of harvest time.
Now in its 12th year, La Vendemmia (The
Harvest) is Ottawa’s celebration of Italian wine
and food culture in Little Italy on Preston Street.
From September 22 to 28, there will be chef
cooking demonstrations, wine tastings, The
Moveable Feast walkabout dining experience,
feature dinners at Preston Street restaurants,
the Taste of Little Italy Wine and Food Show and
the Charity Grape Stomp in support of Ottawa
Regional Cancer Foundation. The Moveable
Feast is a multi-course wine paired meal that
takes place in multiple restaurants with a sommelier
as a guide. Slated for September 28, the
grape stomp involves teams stomping grapes to
make as much juice as they can in one minute.
Visit www.prestonstreet.com for details or call
613 715-9399.
Deadly Medicine at the Canadian War Museum
Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race, an exhibition
organized by the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, is on at the Canadian War Museum.
It tells how the Nazis used the theory of eugenics to justify
mass murder and the Holocaust.
Through a collection of artifacts, images and personal
testimonies, it explores the development of Nazi
eugenics: the use of callipers and eye-colour charts to
measure “human value”; the forced sterilization of the
mentally ill and disabled; the killings of infants, children
and adults under the guise of euthanasia or mercy killing;
and medical experimentation on those deemed inferior.
The exhibition culminates with the murder of six
million Jews in the Holocaust. Many others became victims
of persecution and murder during the Nazis’ campaign
to “cleanse” German society of individuals they
viewed as threats to the nation’s “health”. Throughout,
the show highlights the role played by health workers,
doctors, research scientists and other professionals in
implementation of Nazi eugenic policies. The show runs
until November 11. Visit www.warmuseum.ca.
Nazi officials at the “The Miracle of Life” exhibition,
German Hygiene Museum, Dresden,
1935. The new Nazi museum leadership
asserted that societies resembled organisms
that followed the lead of their brains. The most
logical social structure was one that saw society
as a collective unit, literally a body guided
by a strong leader.
Zhenchen Liu’s Shanghai Shanghai at City Hall Art Gallery
SAW Video and the City Hall Art Gallery are presenting the first
solo exhibition in North America by Chinese artist Zhenchen Liu. His
recent photographs and films, which are documentary and poetic
hybrids, show the frantic changes taking place in Shanghai and their
direct impact on Shanghai residents. The exhibit presents the view of
a man who no longer recognizes his hometown and shows the blindness
of man toward the notion of progress. The show runs until
September 21.
Following the Liu exhibition, there’s a new collection of sculptures
and installations by André Martel. This show investigates the
dynamism of unity, inspired by Albert Low’s Creating Consciousness,
and specifically its premise: “The One that is Two” that calls for a new
paradigm reflecting ambiguity and logic. It runs from October 10 to
November 16.
City Hall Art Gallery is located at 110 Laurier Avenue West. The
gallery is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.
September 2008 • Ottawa 12 • Fifty-Five Plus Magazine
PHOTO: NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION