“Free Wednesdays at Aga Khan Museum” Launches
Special invitation to be extended to local communities
Toronto, February 18, 2015 – The new initiative “Free Wednesdays at Aga Khan Museum” launches today, February 18, welcoming the public to visit the Aga Khan Museum and all exhibitions for free each Wednesday from 4 – 8 pm. In the coming weeks, a special invitation will be issued to residents of neighbourhoods close to the Museum that have been identified as Neighbourhood Improvement Areas (NIAs) by the City of Toronto: Flemingdon Park, Thorncliffe Park, and Victoria Village. Henry Kim, Director and CEO of the Aga Khan Museum, explains: “A key part of our mandate at the Aga Khan Museum is making the arts of Muslim civilizations accessible to everyone so that visitors can appreciate connections between peoples and across time. We’ve already done this by offering a tremendous range of programming for all ages and interest levels, but we also want to remove economic barriers that might prevent visitors from experiencing this Museum. Offering Free Wednesdays will go a long way in doing just that.”
Kim adds that the Free Wednesdays program is part of a larger initiative to help strengthen ties between the Museum and Toronto communities. Plans are underway to develop public programming during Free Wednesdays that will tap into the interests of neighbourhood youth.
For more information about the Aga Khan Museum and its programs, please visit agakhanmuseum.org.
The Aga Khan Museum has been established and developed by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), which is an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN).
The Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) focuses on the physical, social, cultural and economic revitalization of communities in the developing world, but some of its programs, including the Museum, span both the developed and developing worlds. AKTC is composed of several individual programs and units: the Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme (http://www.akdn.org/hcp/), which promotes the conservation and re-use of buildings and public spaces in ways that spur socio-economic development; the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (http://www.akdn.or/architecture/), which awards a prize for architecture every three years; the Aga Khan Music Initiative (http://www.akdn.org/aktc_music_about.asp), which supports talented musicians and music educators who strive to preserve, transmit, and further develop their musical heritage in contemporary forms; the online architectural resource ArchNet.org (www.archnet.org); and the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(http://web.mit.edu/akpia/www/).
The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), a private, international, non-denominational development organization, is active in 30 countries and employs over 80,000 people globally. Its ten agencies address complex development issues, including the provision of quality healthcare and education services, cultural and economic revitalization, micro enterprise, entrepreneurship and economic development, the advancement of civil society and the protection of the environment.
Ismailimail 