Open Structure
Curated by Grace Deveney
November 3, 2022 – January 28, 2023
Ron Bechet, Jared Brown, Whit Forrester, Jennie C. Jones, Harold Mendez, Janelle Ayana Miller, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Derrick Woods-Morrow
Visiting Curator Program
Upcoming event
Exchange as a Symmetrical Gesture
Closing Celebration of the SOAG Visiting Curator Program
Thursday, October 16, 2025
7:00–8:30 PM
Desautels Concert Hall, University of Manitoba
Celebrate the culmination of the School of Art Gallery’s three-year Visiting Curator Program with an evening of reflection and community. The program includes a reading by artist Erika DeFreitas, a curatorial panel with Grace Deveney, Shalaka Jadhav, and Lillian O’Brien Davis moderated by Nic Wilson, and a reception with the launch of three new publications.
Food & drinks | Cash bar | Free admission
Visiting Curator Program Exhibitions
From 2022–2024, the School of Art Gallery hosted three major exhibitions curated through the Visiting Curator Program. These projects brought national and international perspectives to Winnipeg, featuring artists across disciplines and contexts
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The Performance of Shadows
Curated by Lillian O’Brien Davis
February 16 – April 29, 2023
Erika DeFreitas, Betye Saar, Tim Whiten
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To Broadcast is to Scatter
Curated by Shalaka Jadhav
November 30, 2023 – February 10, 2024
seth cardinal dodginghorse, Cadence Planthara, Diana Sofia Lozano, Natalia Villanueva Linares, with projects by June Canedo de Souza and Larissa Sansour & Søren Lind
Meet the Curator
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Deveney is Associate Curator of the fifth iteration of Prospect, a New Orleans-based triennial, titled Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow(2021). Previously, she was Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Exhibitions at the MCA include Christina Quarles (2021), Direct Message: Art, Language, and Power (2019) and Groundings (2018; with Tara Aisha Willis), as well as presentations of the work of Paul Pfeiffer, Amanda Williams and Ania Jaworska.
She is a PhD candidate in Art History at Northwestern University, and her dissertation research looks at television and technology of the 1970s to 1990s and in the works of Howardena Pindell, Tony Cokes, and Stan Douglas, and the ways they created counternarratives to popular representations of Black political thought and action. Often exploring the relationship between landscape and language, Deveney’s research explores how representations of the places we live in, and the language that is used to define our experience is challenged or reconsidered by artists.
Meet the Emerging Curators
Chosen from a wide-open call, the two emerging curators will be mentored by established Visiting Curator Grace Deveney as all three research and present exhibitions, events and publications over the next three years.
Shalaka Jadhav
Shalaka Jadhav spent their childhood between cities in India and in Dubai, before moving to a neighbourhood spitting distance from Ontario’s largest mall. They are currently hosted on Treaty 1, entangling a long time curiosity about art-based methods, and their role in enabling unusual connections and collective futures. In their day job, Shalaka designs and facilitates curriculum and workshops that support young people in moving towards just, climate-resilient futures. Trained as an urban planner, Shalaka is following the advice of an aptitude test to pursue Curatorial Practices at the University of Winnipeg. As Shalaka explores and builds on their curatorial ethic, they see it to be guided by a walking methodology, carrying forward the work of their ancestors in tending for the land, and woven together by conversations over cups of tea. In 2021, Shalaka is the Curator-in-Residence at the Centre for Art Tapes.
Lillian O’Brien Davis
Lillian O’Brien Davis is a curator and writer currently based in Toronto, ON. She is the Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programs at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography. She has curated projects at Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Susan Hobbs Gallery, the MacKenzie Art Gallery, and the School of Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba. Her writing has appeared in BlackFlash magazine, Canadian Art online, C magazine, the Brooklyn Rail, Peripheral Review and Insight Magazine.
“The University of Manitoba can become a centre of excellence, known throughout North America for its curatorial programming, this is my objective in conceiving and funding this initiative.”
- Dr. Michael F.B. Nesbitt, program benefactor
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