A Conversation on WAG-IAC
A Conversation on WAG-IAC is a panel discussion on the new Inuit Art Centre being built at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Designed by Los Angeles-based firm Michael Maltzan Architecture, in collaboration with local Associate Architect Cibinel Architects Ltd., the IAC connects to the southern edge of the original museum building designed by Gustavo da Roza in 1971. As part of the design process, Michael Maltzan joined Winnipeg Art Gallery Director Stephen Borys, Curator of Inuit Art Dr. Darlene Coward Wight, Associate Architect George Cibinel, and architectural photographer Iwan Baan on a trip to Nunavut to visit Inuit communities and active artists’ studios.
The WAG holds in trust the largest public collection of contemporary Inuit art in the world. To celebrate the art, the people who make it, and the lands from which they come, the WAG is building the Inuit Art Centre with the guidance of the WAG Indigenous Advisory Circle. The Centre is innovating the art museum and will be the first of its kind in the world.
Panelists:
Stephen Borys, Heather Igloliorte, Michael Maltzan
Moderator:
Terry MacLeod
Stephen D. Borys is the Director and CEO of the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) where he is overseeing the development of the Inuit Art Centre, opening in early 2021. At the core of his directorship is the goal of advancing a meaningful and sustained dialogue with the public, and creating in both physical and virtual spaces, a welcoming forum where art and artmaking is at the forefront with audiences and stakeholders.
Dr. Borys holds an adjunct professorship at the University of Winnipeg where he teaches in the History and Business departments. He was previously chief curator at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida, at which time he held teaching posts at Florida State University and New College. Prior to Sarasota, he was senior curator and lecturer at the Allen Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio, and before Oberlin, he was assistant curator of European & American Art at the National Gallery of Canada, and a curatorial assistant at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.
He holds an Executive MBA, a PhD in Art and Architectural History from McGill University, a MA in Art History from the University of Toronto, and a BA Honours from the University of Winnipeg.
Borys has organized numerous exhibitions, written accompanying catalogues and scholarly articles, and lectured across North America and internationally. He is the recipient of several research grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council, Canadian Museums Association, Winnipeg Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
Borys is a graduate of the Getty Center’s Museum Leadership Institute and the Next Generation Program, and the Attingham Trust’s Royal Collections Studies Program, London. He was awarded the Order of Manitoba in 2020, Tourism Winnipeg’s Leader of the Year and Downtown Winnipeg BIZ Leadership in the Arts award in 2015, and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012. Borys is a board director of the Canadian Museums Association, member of the CMA Museums and Indigenous Issues Council, past board trustee of the Association of Art Museum Directors, past president and board director of the Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization, and an honorary member of the WAG National Indigenous Advisory Circle.
Dr. Heather Igloliorte, an Inuk from Nunatsiavut (Labrador, Canada), holds the Tier 1 University Research Chair in Circumpolar Indigenous Arts and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at Concordia University (Montreal, Quebec), where she also serves as the Special Advisor to the Provost on Advancing Indigenous Knowledges. In the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology, Heather Co-directs the Indigenous Futures Cluster (with Prof. Jason Edward Lewis), which will soon become the Indigenous Futures Research Centre. Igloliorte has been an independent curator for fifteen years. She currently has two exhibitions touring nationally and internationally, and is working, as the lead guest curator of the inaugural exhibition INUA, towards the opening of the new national Inuit Art Centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 2021. Her nationally touring exhibition SakKijajuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut (2016-2019) received an Award of Outstanding Achievement from the Canadian Museums Association in 2017. Her research, which centres Inuit and other Indigenous knowledges in the understanding of circumpolar and North American Indigenous art and art history, has been published by Duke University Press, TOPIA, Art Journal, and McGill - Queen’s University Press, among others; she has three forthcoming co-edited volumes coming out in 2020-21; and her essay “Curating Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: Inuit Knowledge in the Qallunaat Art Museum,” was awarded the 2017 Distinguished Article of the Year from Art Journal.
Michael Maltzan founded Michael Maltzan Architecture, Inc. in 1995. His projects cross a wide range of typologies, from cultural institutions to city infrastructure. Michael’s notable projects include the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, MoMA QNS, Star Apartments, the Pittman Dowell Residence, the new Sixth Street Viaduct, MIT Vassar Street Residential Hall, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery Inuit Art Centre. His work has gained international acclaim for innovation in both design and construction and has been widely featured in publications and exhibitions worldwide.
Michael received an M.Arch from the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, and BFA and B.Arch degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design. Michael is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, and the 2016 AIA Los Angeles Gold Medal Honoree.
Digital copies of any recent publications (essays and/or books) for reference
Social Transparency: Projects on Housing (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2016)
Terry MacLeod concluded a 33-year career with CBC in 2016 as one of the most accomplished radio journalists in Manitoba. From 1993 he hosted CBC’s Information Radio in Winnipeg, named “The Best Local CBC Radio Program in Canada”. In 2011 he received the Manitoba Psychological Society’s first-ever “Communications Community Award”. He hosted and produced The Weekend Morning Show from 2012 thru 2016. He also guest-hosted Toronto's Metro Morning, Morningside, As It Happens, Morningside in the Summer and The Story From Here. Terry contributed to CBC-TV News Winnipeg, CBC National Radio’s Morningside, BBC Radio Scotland, The Winnipeg Free Press, The Ottawa Citizen and The Victoria Times Colonist.
Prior to the CBC, Terry worked in indigenous language radio for The WaWaTa Communications Society in NW Ontario and the Taqramiut Nipingat radio network in Nunavik in Arctic Quebec. He coordinated an artist-run experimental television centre and was a social worker, and a touring actor all in Thunder Bay Ont. Terry has been an active volunteer with The Canadian Muslim Leadership Institute, The Reel Pride Film Fest, The Winnipeg Theatre Awards, a national judge for the Canadian Association of Journalists and currently The Gimli Film Festival. Terry holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology.