VICTORIA, BC.- The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria immerses visitors in the all-inclusive The Baroque Experience at the Victoria art museum through February 25, 2007. The impetus for The Baroque Experience is the anticipated arrival of Baroque Masterworks from the National Gallery of Canada. The Art Gallery will be host to 12 gorgeous rare 17th century Baroque masterpieces from the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada. As works from this era are often fragile and rarely travel, the exhibition provides a rare and exciting opportunity for gallery visitors to see these national treasures. The Baroque was an opulent era of extravagance. The beautiful featured works contained in Baroque Masterworks from the National Gallery of Canada were painted between 1600 and 1730 by artists in different European countries, of varied economic, political and religious backgrounds; namely El Greco, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn, Simon Vouet, Bernardo Cavallino, Nicolas Poussin. Works from the Baroque era invoke intrigue and emotion, beautifully highlighting their subjects in dramatic lighting and often telling a theatrical story through the character's expressions. While fascinating to academics through the ages, their work continues to be dramatic, sensuous and provocative to all beholders.

The Baroque period was an exciting, extravagant time of transition and transformation. Misshapen Pearl: The Baroque Era accompanies Baroque Masterworks from the National Gallery of Canada. Curated by Patricia Kidd, Stephen T�pfer and Tamara Schweeder, Misshapen Pearl immerses us in Baroque society by exhibiting furniture, ceramics, tapestries, clothing, paintings and engravings from the period. These artifacts reflect how the lavish Baroque style was fashioned into a growing commercial industry. Drawn primarily from the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria’s own collection, this exhibition includes five fabulous Rembrandt prints in celebration of the famed artist’s 400th birthday. The word baroque derives from the ancient Portuguese noun "barroco" which is a pearl that is not round but of unpredictable and elaborate shape. Art critics of the day originally used the French translation ‘baroque’ as a derogatory term to describe post-Renaissance art. Furthermore, Baroque art was full of contradictions: sometimes beautiful, yet at other times horrific; it progressed to naturalism yet still focused on the classics; drew the viewers into the painting while sometimes repulsing them.

The third exhibition, Peculiar Culture:The Contemporary Baroque, curated by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria Curator of Contemporary Art, Lisa Baldissera features Victoria-based artist Luanne Martineau and British artists and Turner prize nominees Jake and Dinos Chapman and explores contemporary expressions of the Baroque. In Martineau’s beautifully grotesque soft sculptures and intricate drawings and in the Chapman’s challenging “collaborations” of Francisco Goya’s series of etchings ‘The Disasters of War’, these artists of today reflect similar desires of their Baroque predecessors as they combine beauty, perversity, humour and horror to engage the audience.

The Baroque Masterworks is organized and circulated by the National Gallery of Canada with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Canada Travelling Exhibitions Indemnification Program. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria acknowledges presenting sponsor The Volunteer Committee of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, platinum sponsor Scotia MacLeod, gold sponsors Cook Roberts Lawyers and Grant Thornton and media partners Times Colonist, Teldon Print Media and CBC Radio One 90.5 FM. The Baroque Experience includes a series of Baroque-inspired artistic events in an endeavour to introduce all aspects of the period. Lectures with experts on Baroque music, Rembrandt and the Dutch Baroque and drama and reality in Baroque art, and a concert of Baroque musical masterpieces complete the context for visitors to experience Baroque society.