Agnes Reimagined - Agnes Etherington Art Centre Agnes Etherington Art Centre

Returning a House to a Home

Our vision takes shape around a simple gesture: the return of Etherington House back into a home. We invoke the spirit of Agnes Etherington’s 1954 bequest of her house to Queen’s to “further the cause of art and community”— now for the 21st century. Bringing this historic house back to life, we make hospitality the guiding institutional ethos of Agnes Reimagined. We’ve inhabited this vision from the start of our journey: an unprecedented community-centred architectural design process drives transformation and change, from the ground up.

Wooden model of Agnes Reimagined. In the background there is a sign that reads hey Kingston. This is Agnes Reimagined. Welcome to your new home. xo Agnes

Modelling a new Vibe on Queen’s Campus. Photo: Paul Litherland

Aerial rendering of the landscape surrounding Agnes Reimagined.

Rrewilding of the landscape connects Agnes Reimagined with the Outdoor Indigenous Gathering Space on campus. Image rendering courtesy of PFS Studio.

Aerial view of walking paths in downtown Kingston and the Queen's University campus. Agnes Etherington Art Centre is marked with a radiating red heart inside a house in the middle.

All paths lead to Agnes. Image courtesy of PFS Studio.

Live Side-by-Side!

Our new curvilinear pavilion sits in dialogue with Agnes’s historic Georgian house to support museum principles that value balance and interconnection. In Agnes Reimagined Indigenous and Western world views, cultural traditions, and protocols sit side-by-side as equal, curatorial and education programming is positioned and resourced non-hierarchically, and creative and administrative work is viewed holistically. Designed to entangle the social and civic role of this museum through space adjacencies that turn proximity into pedagogical opportunity, Agnes Reimagined is a platform to support diverse communities of practice across generations past, present, and future.

Say Yes!

What if relationship-building was a central mission of a museum? We want to be a “yes” institution! Not beholden to outmoded museum rules and standards that hold us back from truly welcoming communities, we balance our “Category A” status with our desire to be nimble and responsive. Rethinking our security perimeters and access points and creating specialized spaces that no longer compromise visitor experience or disregard diverse lived experiences—from HVAC systems that accommodate ceremony to gender neutral, single-use washrooms that surpass accessibility standards, etc.—we build freedom with our new architectures!

Hold Multiplicity!

What does an art centre centre? Or what is it prepared to de-centre! Agnes Reimagined creates opportunities for participation and exchange across communities, cultures, histories, and geographies. Our new building is a framework that operationalizes this aspiration, establishing a polyvocal museum ecosystem that thrives on diversity—be that of the collections, we house, the communities with whom we collaborate, the kinds of spaces we program, or ourselves as a team. Even diverse micro-climates must replace singular museum temperatures! Agnes is transforming the history of museology by adding new traditions to its trajectory.

Be Sustainable!

From strategic design, construction and procurement decisions to proactive policy change, Agnes is reimagining the habits of museums. Our high performing building (TEDI: 50 @ kWh/m2, window/wall ratio @ 22%, etc.) is fueled with electrical and geothermal energy systems, reduces water consumption and saves more energy. New architecture prioritizes durable, low-carbon materials, and is set in a bio-diverse, rewilded, pollinator landscape. A commitment to climate justice is embedded in practices across all areas of museum activity—from exhibition-making and collections care to facilities management. Agnes adopts the BIZOT Green Protocol.

Art Everywhere!

From beautiful new galleries and studios, state-of-the-art event rooms for performances, films, and talks, innovative spaces that support alternative forms of art study, teaching, and research to experimental spaces that defy neat categorization, art lives at Agnes. Design flexibility anticipates evolving practices and encourages art’s full integration throughout our entire facility—even in the most unexpected places. By collaborating with artists on functional design elements—such as our welcome desk and café, modular furniture for galleries and program spaces, and more—Agnes ensures artists are part of our very infrastructure: art is everywhere!

Community-Engaged Design Process

“The process is proving as important as the outcome: by bringing together community members around the kitchen table, the open-ended conversations around the future of the gallery echo the way women have gathered for generations, in many cultures, including in traditional Indigenous communities, and in Agnes Etherington’s own day and age.”

– Tiffany Shaw in Canadian Architect

International RFP Process; 2022, Schematic Design and Design Options; 2023, Schematic Design and Design Development/Contract Documents; 2025, Construction; 2026, Commissioning

Schematic design (2022)

Schematic Design is a phase of collaboration with architects, and in our case, community, to experiment with design solutions that give form to the vision. It addresses the needs of the program and works creatively with space allocation and adjacency to bring the vision to life.

Sharing Circle One: EDI and Mother Earth Womb
(2 April 2022)
Sharing Circle Two: Housing, Caring and Hospitality
(30 April 2022)
Sharing Circle Three: Landscape and Materials
(11 June 2022)
Sharing Circle Four: Talk Back
(11 June 2022)

Design Development (2023)

Design Development digs deeper into the more practical design elements and brings other areas to bear on building construction, including mechanical, electrical and structural engineering. This phase also hones the design based on the users’ specific needs for each space.

Sharing Circle Five: Reconvening
(15 July 2023)
Sharing Circle Six: Indigenous Self-Determination Spaces
(23 September 2023)
Sharing Circle Seven: Art Everywhere House
(2 December 2023)

Construction (2025)

Beginning in May 2024 through to September 2026, Agnes will be operating at an offsite location as demolition, construction and renovations take place at 36 University Avenue.

Sharing Circle Eight: Planning the Opening
(TBD)

Transforming Traditions

“Like art, great architecture is a transformation of tradition and can change the way we see, experience, and relate to each other and the world. True transformation invites new ways of thinking, creative processes, new forms and expression. Agnes Reimagined offers a rare opportunity for a paradigm shift in museums in Canada, and the world.”

– Bruce Kuwabara, Principal and Founder, KPMB Architects

A Vision Ecosystem

“Agnes Reimagined, for me, is an unprecedented opportunity to rethink museum practices by literally building alternative architectures that restructure them, ensuring that our new building won’t be container for old systems but a proposition for new ideas.”

– Emelie Chhangur, Director and Curator, Agnes Etherington Art Centre

Picture This!

To transform museum culture, we must first change museum architecture! Agnes Reimagined is designed as an ecosystem of spaces and practices whose lively interconnections are set in motion through thoughtfully curated space adjacencies and newly conceived security perimeters that together restructure the foundations of our work. By entangling our various museum functions non-hierarchically (from hosting residencies and ceremonies to making exhibitions and stewarding the care of collections), Agnes reimagines what an art centre centres!

Jatiwangi art Factory’s terracotta ensemble, Lair, invite Kingston musicians to jam at Agnes including Broderick Gabriel and Lori Young, Matt Rogalsky and Golam Rabbani.

Students from Central Public School on a school field trip to Agnes get to play and dance in Etherington House, an extension of the exhibition a guest + a host = a ghost.

Artists Hadley Howes, Neven Lochhead and Mo Horner, all part of a micro-residency process and the exhibition “A guest + a host = a ghost,” engage in claiming and changing space together in Etherington House in anticipation of the JaF Jam Session.

Living and Hanging Out in Etherington House

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.

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JP Longboat's Story Lodge, part of An Institute for Curatorial Inquiry. Photo: Shelby Lisk

Rendering of the Ceremonial Space. Courtesy of KPMB Architects

Rendering of entrance to Elder's Rest and Decompression Room. Courtesy of KPMB Architects

Rendering of Elder's Rest and Decompression Room. Courtesy of KPMB Architects

Architectural overview of the Indigenous Self-Determination Spaces. Courtesy of KPMB Architects

Indigenous Self Determination at Agnes

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.

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Installation view of Chris Curreri: A Surrogate, A Proxy, A Stand-In. Photo: Tim Forbes

Installation view of With Opened Mouths on view at Agnes through 30 January 2022. Photo: Paul Litherland

Installation view of History Is Rarely Black or White.

Installation view of Fabrics of Representation. Photo: Paul Litherland

Agnes's new galleries. Courtesy of KPMB Architects

Exhibition Spaces

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.

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An Institute for Curatorial Inquiry. Performance, Exit Through the Back Door Laughing with Alize Zorlutuna and SF Ho

Curators Alicia Boutilier (left) and Alysha Strongman (right) look at prints in the Agnes vaults.

Creation Station, 2023. Photo: Tim Forbes

An Institute for Curatorial Inquiry. Workshop, A Collection of Dreams (part 1) with Kirsty Màiri Robertson

Inquiry Based Learning Spaces to Support the Next Generation

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.

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Agnes Reimagined, showing the new Welcome Centre and the Arts and Events Hub. Courtesy of KPMB Architects.

Exterior Composition for Agnes Reimagined, showing the new curvilinear addition from Bader Lane. Courtesy of KPMB Architects.

A Living Room Connects Everything at Agnes

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.

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Exterior Composition for Agnes Reimagined, showing the new curvilinear addition (left) in conversation with the heritage Etherington House (right). Rendering by Studio Sang courtesy of KPMB Architects.

Bright, modern interior with floor-to-ceiling curved windows. People seated in a circle in black chairs socialise.

Agnes Reimagined, showing the Arts and Events Hub. Courtesy of KPMB Architects.

A Lilypad is also a Mushroom, and Anything Else you Need it to Be

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.

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Agnes Prototypes

In 2021, we began modelling our program aspirations for Agnes Reimagined. It’s helped us understand the architectures required to support our new artistic vision, while evaluating the experimentation undertaken to support our integrated arts “ecosystem.” From “vibrating edges” to “reinhabiting” Etherington House, we continue prototyping our future practices, particularly during our closure.