A student discovery, 50 years in the making.

In 1976, seventeen video tapes quietly entered the Agnes Etherington Art Centre’s collection, marking the beginning of its time-based media holdings. Nearly fifty years later, Art History undergraduate intern Alyssa Gauthier found herself asking a seemingly simple question: why these films, and why then? The answer begins on the shores of Kingston’s waterfront and far beyond the gallery walls.

When the Olympics came to Kingston
That same summer, the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games brought international attention. Kingston had been chosen to host the sailing competitions at Portsmouth Olympic Harbour. With visitors arriving from around the world, cultural institutions across the city mobilized to meet the moment. Agnes was no exception. Funding tied to Olympic cultural programming allowed the gallery to expand its offerings and with this funding, seventeen films on U-matic tape were acquired. Archival records identify the purchase simply as “Olympic Project Funding,” but the implications were lasting. These seventeen tapes were the first films to be acquired into the Agnes’s collection.

Reconstructing an exhibition

Digging into records at Agnes and Queen’s University Archives, Alyssa traced the films to a major exhibition presented during the same summer as those Olympics: Celebration of the Body (15–30 June 1976). Co-curated by artists Ian and Ingrid Baxter of N.E. Thing Co., under Agnes director Michael Bell, the exhibition brought together sculpture, prints, performance, and film in a multimedia exploration of human embodiment. As described in the exhibition catalogue, it aimed to offer “a fresh look at the aesthetic totality of expression of the human body.” The films were central to this vision.

While documentation of their exact installation remains incomplete, Alyssa discovered in archival slides that at least one television was installed. These slides offer a glimpse into how video art was presented to audiences at the time. For Alyssa, these archival fragments became part of a larger process of piecing together not just what was shown, but how it was experienced.

Fragile formats, lasting questions
All seventeen works entered the collection as 3/4″ U-matic tapes—a format that has since become obsolete. Today, the originals can no longer be played. Through decades of migration efforts, many of the films survive in newer formats like VHS, DVD, and digital files. Some are even accessible online. For Alyssa, this transformation raises questions that extend beyond preservation alone.

“Researching the different migration statuses of the films has reinforced the increasingly important question, of whether a time-based artwork is the physical tape or the recorded contents itself”

Alyssa urges that further thought be given to this question when considering future research and acquisitions within Agnes’s time-based media collection. For a collection built on evolving technologies, the answer is not always straightforward.

Encountering the films today
As part of her research, Alyssa screened several of the original acquisitions. One work stayed with her: Lisa Steele’s Birthday Suit (1974). In the black and white video, Steele explains the scars on her body, detailing the stories behind each one in chronological order. The pacing is slow and even meditative. This 13- minute video invites viewers to sit with the human body as she describes its scars and defects. For Alyssa, the work “heightens bodily awareness and reminds one of the records of life the body keeps.”

Looking ahead by looking back

Nearly five decades after their acquisition, these early film works continue to shape Agnes’s evolving identity. Two of the original Olympic-funded films, Steele’s Birthday Suit and John Baldessari’s I Am Making Art, will be presented in Living Arrangements, the opening exhibition of Agnes Reimagined. Their inclusion brings the story full circle: from a moment of international attention in 1976 to a renewed vision for the Agnes Etherington Art Centre today.