Image: Winnipeg Art Gallery
The Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq is planning two Wednesday-night programs in August that pair community participation with an early look at a new collection-based exhibition. Under its ‘WAG Wednesday Nights’ series, the gallery will offer free evening access from 5 to 9 p.m. on August 12 and August 19, with programming tied to World Calligraphy Day on the first date and the opening celebration of ‘Terra Cognita / Incognita: Revisiting the Landscape’ on the second.
WAG-Qaumajuq describes WAG Wednesday Nights as a weekly after-hours format built around free admission, curated tours, live performance, creative pop-ups and other social programming. The gallery notes that the Wednesday series will not take place on August 26 because of scheduled programming, making the August 12 and 19 events the main Tuesday-free offerings in the current run.
On August 12, the gallery will mark World Calligraphy Day with a collaborative workshop led by local calligrapher Janet Murata. According to WAG, participants will help create a 15-foot community scroll as part of the evening’s focus on the beauty and history of the written word. The event is listed as free and runs during the same 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesday-night hours.
The August 19 edition shifts attention to ‘Terra Cognita / Incognita: Revisiting the Landscape’, which opens that evening at WAG-Qaumajuq. The exhibition brings together more than 125 historical and contemporary works from the gallery’s permanent collection and examines how artists have represented and reimagined landscape across generations. WAG says the show looks at landscape both as physical territory and as a cultural idea, tracing shifting understandings through a range of mediums.
The exhibition also includes work by four local contemporary artists: Anna Binta Diallo, Sarah Fuller and Debra Frances Plett, alongside Lourdes Still, who is creating a new commission for the project. In the gallery’s own description, the phrase ‘terra cognita/incognita’ — meaning “known land/unknown land” — points to a central tension in the exhibition’s framing, including the ways landscape has been mapped, renamed and exploited through colonial frameworks.
WAG’s exhibition materials say ‘Terra Cognita / Incognita’ considers how artists have engaged with land in relation to pastoral imagery, extraction, displacement and environmental change, while also presenting land as a living and relational presence. The gallery positions the show as part of a revamp of its permanent collection galleries, intended to bring old favourites and rarely seen works into fresh arrangements.
The exhibition is curated by Dr. Riva Symko, WAG-Qaumajuq’s Head of Collections & Exhibitions and Curator of Canadian Art. WAG says the opening celebration will begin at 7 p.m. on August 19 during WAG Wednesday Nights, with cellist Leanne Zacharias also scheduled to perform, and that the series is made possible by Power Corporation of Canada. ‘Terra Cognita / Incognita’ is listed on the gallery site for Aug. 20, 2026 to Nov. 1, 2027, at Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq.
