How Great Cow Art the latest museum exhibit

Community members completed this large mural at the When the Cows Come Home Festival, and youth in the museum’s summer program helped finish it. (Jeff Helsdon Photo)

Jeff Helsdon, Editor

The latest exhibit at Annandale House National Historic Site brings together curator Kate Bakos fascination with both art and agriculture.

How Great Cow Art opened on Sept. 20 in the Pratt Gallery and runs until Oct. 25.

The name is reference to what Bakos called “a playful exhibition that explores the broader relationship between agriculture art and the community.” It builds on this year's past exhibits celebrating the 145th anniversary of Annandale Farm.

“We thought this would be another way to bring light to the culture that springs forth from agriculture,” Bakos said. “It asks the visitor to think about agriculture not only as a commodity, aubt also as creativity, identity and community.”

Born and raised on an area tobacco farm, she understands the importance of agriculture locally. Bakos left the farm to earn a Master’s in Art History and Visual Culture from the University of Guelph.

“I always had a tenderness towards agriculture art and pastoral themes,” she said. “It’s the collision of my fine arts degree and rural roots.”

Prominent in the display is a mural that fills one wall and began at the Cows Come Festival at Annandale earlier this summer. Youth in the museum’s summer program finished it.

“The greater Tillsonburg area completed this mural,” Bakos said.

Another piece shows vignettes of various Tillsonburg icons, including the tobacco auction exchange. Local artists Helen Shearing, Clara Mansfield and Audrey Stilwell interpretations of the Annandale Farm barn are also part of the exhibit.

Cows, of course, are front and centre in the exhibit. Famed artist Ross Butler, who was from Norwich, has several cow paintings in the exhibit. He was also known for his butter sculptures. The Butler Gallery in Woodstock loaned paintings and cow sculptures from the exhibit.

Harriet Tillson, the daughter of Annandale House builder E.D. Tillson, has a painting of a farm scene in the exhibit; it is in the museum’s collection.

The exhibit also includes a painting of tobacco kilns by the late Nellie VanGastel, an Otterville-area artist.

“They’re disappearing from our landscape,” Bakos lamented. “You’d be remiss to do an art show about Tillsonburg agriculture without putting tobacco in it.”

Fans of renowned artist Peter Snyder, who painted Amish scenes, will want to check out one of his originals in the show.