About the Visiting Curator Program
Visiting Curator Program
Launching Summer 2021, the Visiting Curator Program will serve as a catalyst for three international-caliber exhibitions and will play a vital role in defining contemporary art and its attendant discourses in the Prairies. It will also give students, faculty, and other community members meaningful opportunities to engage with curators charting new trajectories in the field. Through its mentorship component, it will foster strong new voices in this field.
This new program is generously supported by Dr. Michael F.B. Nesbitt, whose contributions to the arts and community-building are deeply felt throughout Winnipeg, and especially at the University of Manitoba.
Internationally-recognized curator and art historian, Grace Deveney, is the 2021 inaugural visiting curator in the School of Art Gallery's Visiting Curator Program.
About Grace Deveney
Visiting Curator
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.
Book today!
Online Studio Visits for Photo and Media Based Artists!
Presented in partnership with PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts.
School of Art Gallery and PLATFORM are please to offer photo and media based artists one-on-one online studio visits with the School of Art Gallery’s Visiting Curators: Grace Deveney (Chicago, IL), Shalaka Jadhav (Kitchener, ON and Whitehorse, YT), and Lillian O’Brien Davis (Toronto, ON).
Please email programming@platformgallery.org, with the subject line STUDIO VISIT to request a studio visit. Let PLATFORM know who you would like to meet with, and they will do their best to pair you up with your chosen curator. Each curator will meet with four artists. As there are limited spots available, studio visits will be booked on a first-come-first-served basis.
Once your visit has been confirmed, your email address will be shared with the curator who will be visiting you. In advance of your visit, you will be asked to provide them with a CV, bio, artist statement, and max 20 images or links to your website(s).
Once paired up, the curator will contact you to set up a date and time for your meeting.
To learn more about Grace Deveney, Shalaka Jadhav, and Lillian O’Brien Davis, please visit www.visitingcurator.ca.
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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School of Art
Room 313 ARTlab Building
180 Dafoe Road
University of Manitoba (Fort Garry campus)
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2