On view at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal from November 14, 2024– March 16, 2025, Being There: Photography in Arthur Erickson’s Early Travel Diaries draws upon the CCA’s extensive archive to examine Erickson’s belief that architecture must be experienced to be understood, tracing how his encounters with people, places, landscapes, and ideas during his early travels in Europe and North Africa between 1950 and 1952, and in Asia in 1961, informed his early residential projects and his subsequent trajectory as an architect.
Comprised of site notes, travel diaries, and letters that have never before been exhibited, as well as Erickson’s sketches and newly digitized photographs, Being There creates a vivid narrative of his education as an architect, spanning themes and geographies to examine his unique travel methodology and his prescient sensitivity to site and climatic context. Central to the show is his correspondence from Japan, Cambodia and Bali, which includes a series of remarkable letters to his former teacher and mentor, the celebrated Canadian artist Gordon Webber.
Being There: Photography in Arthur Erickson’s Early Travel Diaries
on view until 16 March 2025.
Canadian Centre for Architecture
1920 Baile St.
Montreal, Quebec H3H 1R4, Canada
https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/
