An archive of Canadian curated moments

Last week, I wrote about Kitty Scott’s challenge to AGO audience members and emerging curators to list a handful of influential Canadian exhibitions, organized by Canadian curators, that have taken place over the past 30 years. This seems to be a common worry or anxiety in Canadian curating at the moment, at least according to critic Nancy Tousley’s report over at Canadian Art about the discussions that resulted from the Banff International Curatorial Institute’s conference “Are Curators Unprofessional?” (also organized by Scott and the Belkin gallery’s Scott Watson). The concern about the lack of a history of contemporary Canadian curating seems to be linked to the increasing professionalization of curating and its growing presence in university programs. After all, how do you teach someone to curate in Canada if there is still a lack of a cohesive history of recent, paradigm-shifting Canadian curating?

So, in an effort to put together an informal archive of what Alissa Firth-Eagland suggested calling “Canadian curated moments,” and to generate some discussion about why it is so hard to put such a list together, I’m inviting “emerging” (though I hate that word – emerging from what? And into what?) and mid-career curators in Canada (or formerly based in Canada) to weigh in on the exhibitions that have influenced them. While I initially had trouble coming up with my own list, other curators were up for the challenge and are sending their lists, which will be posted on the blog each week over the next few months (or until I run out of lists). Thanks to Christopher Régimbal (whose list will be up shortly) for suggesting the project and for being so gung-ho about it from the get-go.

The ground rules for the lists are flexible, but I’m looking for exhibitions that were mounted between 1980 and 2010. These could be group or solo shows, and you don’t need to necessarily have seen them “in the flesh”, but they need to be curated by a Canadian and include Canadian artists.

As a few people have pointed out, and as all the brackets in the second paragraph might suggest, the definitions that drive the list are tricky: “Canadian” especially is slippery at best and more than a little problematic, with not-so-subtle nationalist undertones. Dissenting contributions or lists that contest the very terms of the debate are welcome and encouraged. I’m hoping that a good discussion will come out of it, at the very least.

Though I have started by asking a group of curators I know personally and invited them to submit their lists, the “archive” is open to everyone. If you want to contribute a list, please send it to gabbymoser@gmail.com