The Weekender: Goya and Gillray, Interior Design Show 2012 and Come Up To My Room
1. WINTERLICIOUS
It seems like every culinary event these days has “licious” tacked onto the end, but it’s this semi-annual fest that started it all. Back in the tourism-light days of 2003 (thank SARS, bird flu and 9/11), the city wrangled 36 restaurants into offering up super-affordable prix fixe lunch and dinner menus. It was enough to get even the city’s non-foodies to surrender to alimentary obsession every now and again—“now” being the next two weeks for Winterlicious and “again” being another two weeks in July for the summertime version. Cue the competitive reservation making, complaints about tipping and overtired kitchen staff. Check out this year’s best bets here. Jan. 27 to Feb. 9. toronto.ca/winterlicious.
2. GOYA AND GILLRAY: HUMOUR THAT BITES
Poking fun at the ruling elite is a favourite pastime for smart alecks across the world—it has been for centuries and continues unabated to this day (see exhibit A). But it hasn’t always been easy to mock our elected leaders—take Spanish painter Francisco de Goya, for example, who produced a series of satirical miniatures, Los Caprichos, only to be forced into removing them from the public eye after threats of arrest. In this AGO exhibit, Goya’s paintings are on display alongside prints by an English contemporary, James Gillray. Unlike Goya, the English enthusiastically took to Gillray’s work (they’re so snarky), so it’s interesting to note the similarities between works created in two completely different political landscapes. To April 15. $19.50. Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas St. W., 416-979-6648, ago.net.
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