The Galt Museum explores China with a new exhibit opening today, Jan. 31.
“It’s a combination of a traveling exhibit from the Royal Ontario Museum and a few objects from our own Galt Museum collection,” said curator Wendy Aitkens of the exhibit  Arts of China.

 The exhibit  features intricately carved furniture from the Galt Museum collection and bronze, jade and ceramics which date back to 11,000 B.C..
The Galt Museum opened the new exhibit just in time to celebrate the Chinese new year, the Year of the horse, Jan. 31.

While Arts of China is open to the public today, the official opening is Feb. 9 from 2-3 p.m. when the Galt Museum welcomes special guest Lisa Claypool, University of Alberta associate professor of history, art, design and visual culture. She will discuss the meaning of jades, bronzes and porcelain in the culture of the Quing Dynasty (1644-1911), the last dynasty in China.

Mitch Miyagawa’s family has probably been on the receiving end of the most government apologies on record.
So he decided to explore the issues ralating to  the apologies by making a documentary, “A Sorry State,” which will be screened at the Galt Museum, at 7 p.m., Nov. 14. He will also be speaking at the University of Lethbridge  on Friday at noon for their Art Now program.

2013 marks the 25th Anniversary of Japanese-Canadian Redress: in 1988, Mitch Miyagawa’s Japanese-Canadian family received an apology from Prime Minister Brian Mulroney for the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Miyagawa’s stepmother Etheline was a young victim of residential schools for Aboriginal children. His stepfather, Harvey, is the son of Chinese immigrants who were burdened with a racist head tax. Both also received official apologies from the Canadian government.

“It’s about my family’s experience with government apologies,” he summarized from Vancouver on his way out east. The film has screened on CTV 2 as well as TVO.

“It hasn’t done very well at festivals, probably because it has been on TV. But I’m doing a lot of community screenings like this one,” he said.

 It took about four years to complete the film from the original idea to it’s completion. A lot of that time was spent getting funding for it.
“It took about a year to edit and my dad died during the completion of the film,” he said adding  the story of his dad being detained in an Japanese internment camp during the Second World War,”  and receiving an official apology from Brian Mulroney in 1988 sparked his interest in the issues.

“He remarried an aboriginal woman who raised in a residential school and she got an apology from Stephen Harper. And she remarried a Chinese man, who was subjected to the Chinese Head tax. So there are a lot of apologies,” he said.
 So he decided to explore some of these sites and research the history of these events.
“I wanted to find out what does it all mean,” he said.

 He noted some apologies are merely lip service. Others have a more symbolic value
“I think it really does depend on the apology.  There are bad and good apologies,” he said.
The best ones are a really unique way to tell the story of these events,” he continued.
Then there are the others.

The Galt Museum is getting excited for  the second annual harvest Festival, Oct. 5.
 There will be a variety of activities happening at the free family event from 5-9 p.m. live music from Karen Romanchuk and Pete Watson.

There will also be activities like last year’s favourite — line dancing lessons with the Windy Rafters Barn Dance.
 There will also be new activities including sugar beet carving as opposed to pumpkin carving.

“It’s interesting to see  where sugar comes from. It’s a big industry here,” said special programs co-ordinator Leslie Hall, who is excited to learn how to carve a sugar beet.
“The younger kids can just draw on them, ” she said.
“There will also be hay rides and we’ll be making stone soup,” she continued adding stone soup is when everybody in a community would gather and bring one item, all of which they would combine to make a gigantic pot of soup.

“It should be a lot of fun. There will be wagon rides with horses. It’s our second year, so we‘re bringing back some of  our old favourites form last year. We’ll be making mini-caramel apples. They’re bite sized so they’re easier to eat,” she enthused.
“ The best part of this is I get to put on events I think are really cool,” she said.

There is an old adage that goes If you want to start an argument, either talk about politics or religion. Well instead of an argument, the Galt Museum hopes to  start a discussion about religion and its contribution to the community in their new exhibit Religion in the Bible Belt, which officially opens, Sept. 22.
 As soon as Galt Museum patrons enter the exhibit, they are greeted by a scale model of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, which was built for Lethbridge’s centennial in 1985.

 Looking around, there are special panels about each religious denomination in the community and their contributions. There are information panels about the contributions of Niitsitapii (Blackfoot), Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, United Church, Mormon, Buddhism, Hutterites and Mennonites. She noted others are not mentioned but that does not mean their successes and influence are any less important.

“They provided a social welfare network, started schools, established medical care, became politically involved, built impressive buildings, organized social groups for all ages and offered musical and theatrical entertainment for the whole community,”  she summarized in a press release.

“ We‘re doing this exhibit because the community asked us to,” said curator Wendy Aitkens adding the museum had previously done a survey in the city about what exhibits people would like to see. Religion was one of them.

It is a monumental subject to tackle, so Aitkens narrowed the focus down to religion in Lethbridge between the late 1800s and 1930.
There are panels about the impact of religion on southern Alberta in a variety of ways as well as displays of religious items like chairs, crosses and communion paraphernalia.