Agnes Reimagined

Museum staff respond to ways of working that are rooted in hospitality by being hosts themselves. Upstairs, artists live at Agnes in a fully-functioning, two-bedroom apartment. This changes the temporality of our work by facilitating radical shifts in our program: sustained artistic exploration and curatorial research of our collection; long-term relationship building between visiting artists and local communities. So too, Indigenous communities visiting from far away stay at Agnes with ancestors, participate in ceremony, create artwork, do research, etc., well beyond museum hours.

Downstairs, intergenerational and intercultural dialogues unfold across community-centered exhibitions and event-based programming that gather around Agnes’s first-ever café. The adjacent Biéler Studio enlivens this milieu through newly designed and accessible makerspaces for workshops, learning classes and other after-museum-hour activities. Outdoor and indoor porches surround Etherington House to facilitate the “unprogrammed” convergences of simply hanging out.  Agnes’s new architectures re-socialize our museum practices.

donate

Indigenous communities visit ancestors and cultural belongings in purpose-built spaces that support ceremony and sacred fire. An outdoor medicine garden on a second-floor terrace nourishes practices extending across the museum’s entire ecosystem. A purposefully reimagined Keeping Place, designed around ancestors’ needs, paradigmatically shifts care away from western ideas of preservation to create living spaces for this evolving work to take precedent. Feeding, touching, dancing, sounding, listening, and learning happen in ways determined by Indigenous protocols, not western museum practices. Our live-in residence supports durational practices of Indigenous Elders, artists, curators and community members, facilitates repatriation and reciprocally supports process-based work. Grounding collections care practices in Indigenous ways of knowing and being complements western conservation training of Queen’s esteemed Art Conservation Program and enables a new generation of art conservators to be trained in both western and Indigenous world views. Our building is a proposition that will change museology in Canada.

donate

Doubling Agnes’s exhibition spaces means more of our outstanding 17,000-object collection is on view and available to curating innovative connections across the many temporalities and world views represented in our holdings. A cluster of new second-floor galleries allows Agnes to develop large-scale, site-specific, contemporary art commissions produced in collaboration with our artists-in-residence and to bring impressive travelling exhibitions to our region.

Renovation of our collection storage, newly equipped for in-situ research alongside actual art objects, extends notions of hospitality even to what has traditionally been the most exclusive museum spaces. A 25% increase to specialized art storage ensures we can continue actively acquiring artworks for Agnes’s future.

An expanded “back-of-house” enhances Agnes’s category A status as a museum; improved environmental conditions for artworks provide adequate ventilation for smudging; newly equipped workshops facilitate purpose-built exhibition design and support greater staff-artist collaboration in the realization of contemporary art commissions.

donate

New learning spaces woven throughout the museum operate at the intersection of Agnes’s civic, social and pedagogical roles. Fostering professional development and nurturing the youngest members of our community through the transformative power of art, these spaces truly grow the future of Agnes’ rad new vision and ensure our ecosystem will thrive! The new “Institute for Curatorial Inquiry” is space for curatorial experimentation and play; it enhances our Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies degree granting program and situates Agnes as a leader in curatorial experimentation in Canada. The redesigned and expanded McTavish Art Study Centre enables the intimate study of art and experientially grounds all disciplines at Queen’s in why art matters. A dedicated kid’s maker space exemplifies Agnes’s commitment to messy, arts-based educational programming.

donate

Affectionately referred to as our “living room,” Agnes’s new welcome centre dynamically connects the enlivened Etherington House to our new Arts & Events Hub. Our kid’s maker space, McTavish Art Study Centre, and Agnes’s galleries all radiate around this open and permeable space. A 40 x 150 foot “art wall” means art is everywhere! Seating is scattered to offer modular, flexible, and audience-driven arrangements for informal conversation, reading, and hanging out. With three public entrances and exits, our living room is a gathering place and a passageway: it provides access to our new outdoor east terrace, nestled within our rewilded landscape. Through our living room, we welcome you into our home.

We make it easier to get into Agnes!

A covered bus bay on Bader Lane to the south provides easy access into Agnes for school/tour buses, for wheel trans and taxis drop off and accessible parking spots for visitors.

donate

KPMB’s Bruce Kuwabara calls it a lilypad. Agnes calls it a mushroom. Regardless of its naming, or framing, this organically grown, three-story pavilion clad in wood solar shading supports some of the newest program spaces at Agnes while proposing an entirely different kind of architectural paradigm for Queen’s campus. On the ground floor a flexible, 250-person capacity Arts & Events Hub is suited up for state-of-the art programming—including concerts, performances, screenings, art installations, dinners, conferences, and anything else you can dream of. It will be Kingston’s most coveted space for weddings and other bespoke events. At the click of a button, a moveable curvilinear wall turns the space from intimate to expansive. On the second floor, Agnes’s new pavilion hosts Indigenous Self Determination spaces, the Institute for Curatorial Inquiry and 5,000 sf of new exhibition space.

donate