Walking into 2026 like...

AGNES celebrates 2025 Accomplishments

As we close out our second year off-site, AGNES looks back on an impressive 12 months, different from any that we’ve experienced before!

Early this year, we gained a new space! AGNES spread out into the bottom two floors of our temporary home at Rideau Building (207 Stuart St). Our take over included the main floor garage, which we renovated and opened for exhibition and programming.

Seeing the potential of this makeshift space, Team AGNES, along with our partners, produced five exhibitions:

1. Kinnomics,  Iman Datoo’s exhibition combining digital claymation, sound installation and augmented reality
2. Xenolithic, Nicholas Crombach’s large-scale, cross-sectional sculptures
3. The Clearing,  a group exhibition made up of sculptures, murals, poetry and soundscapes featured on CBC and The Kingstonist
4. Fluorescent Beige, Janice Reid’s powerful portrait photography, guest curated by Tianna Edwards of Yellow House
5. Hotline, featuring over 40 HIV/AIDS posters from the Trellis HIV & Community Care collection at Queen’s Archives
6. with one final exhibition on the way for winter 2026: Midheaven, featuring photographic processes and animation

Extending beyond Rideau Building into the community, AGNES produced new public art installations and exhibitions including:

• Judith Brown (Blur #6), by 2025 Sobey Art Award shortlister, Sandra Brewster, on view at 68 Brock St in downtown Kingston, Ontario
• Tracing Kingston’s Solidarities, community-led collage prints about Kingston’s submerged Black histories featured on the hoardings surrounding Agnes Reimagined
• Spirits of the Land, a gorgeous series of paintings by artists Jaylene Cardinal and Dakota Ward at Stauffer Library (101 Union St)
• Two successful iterations of the exhibition A Smile Split by the Stars, the first at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography and the second at Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre (open until this Saturday, 20 December 2025!)

Programs and Artmaking

Our Rideau Building takeover means we have become the proud owners of two new studios! AGNES’s former  Education Assistant Alyssa Bonner helped to transform two empty offices into warm and inviting creative spaces.

In all, we’ve hosted over 50 in-person events, including our popular regular programs like Art Hive, Creation Station, Queering Collage and  bespoke art classes like Transforming Spaces: Intro to Murals with Katika Marczell and Portraiture and Storytelling with  photographer Janice Reid.

In 2026, we’ll continue to host workshops and artmaking sessions, including:

• Inspired Impressions: Linocut Printmaking with Lisa Leskien
• Analogue Poster Making: Intro to Letterpress and Screen Printing with Vincent Perez and Benjamin Nelson
• Archetypal Animation for Teens with Stacey Sproule.

As always, Art Hive, Queering Collage and Creation Station will continue, with registration for our next session of Creation Station (11 January 2026) opening today.

Digital Agnes

Digital AGNES has ramped up this year as we collaborate, develop and produce more content for our online showcase.

Interact:

• Learn about the Historical Dress Collection through the eyes of three Kingston drag artists with our Patterns for All Bodies project. Create your own version of these garments by using our modernized patterns!
• Revisit Ukutula: Our Timeless Journeys in our online exhibition
• Go deep on works of art with our collection highlights: Wendy Simon’s Pear Around, Evergon’s Margaret & Jesse (Florida) and Luis Jacob’s Anarchist Free School Minutes, 1999

Watch:

• Migration Musings: A Journey with Jinny Yu, an award-winning Artists at Agnes video which inspired her work in the collection originally made for the 56th Venice Biennale
• Koerner Lecture with Marigold Santos, a thoughtful presentation on Santos’s multi-dimensional work which includes painting, tattooing and embroidery, all against the backdrop of her diasporic identity
• Frances K Smith Lecture with Agnes Reimagined architect, Bruce Kuwabara, entitled Catalyzing Change, in which he talks about his life, architectural career and our new building

Listen:

• Settle in with 10 new episodes of With Opened Mouths, which just completed its third season. Hosted by Qanita Lilla, Associate Curator, Arts of Africa
• Go behind the scenes of the exhibition Fluorescent Beige for a chat between arist and curator with Fluorescent Beige: In Conversation with Janice Reid and Tianna Edwards

Staff updates

In January 2025, Team AGNES welcomed TD Civic Engagement, Strategic Initiatives and Impact Coordinator, Neshan Tung. Neshan has been working to improve our membership tiers and visitor experience and is currently deep into plans for our new Visitor Experience Team, which will launch when our new building opens in 2026.

We also welcomed Julia Jim into the role of Education Assistant, Special Projects. Julia has been focusing on increasing our outreach to local school boards and educators, facilitating school group tours and working with our docent team to staff our artmaking programs.

AGNES Reimagined

Last week, Team AGNES was treated to an Agnes Reimagined tour from site engineer Rylan Richter of Graham Construction. Here we are standing in what will soon be the living room:  our living room is a gathering place and a passageway, the first thing visitors will see when they enter. For context, the corner of Etherington House can be seen in the middle ground, and Kingston Hall in the distance across University Avenue.

The building is on track to open in 2026 and we are all excited to welcome you in early 2027. Watch the building emerge on our YouTube Live feed and continue to watch this space  to stay up-to-date on building news, including our opening plans and inaugural exhibitions!

Winter Closure

Team AGNES takes a break! Our administrative offices, studios and off-site gallery at Rideau Building (207 Stuart Street) will be closed for the winter break from 22 December 2025–7 January 2026.

Of course, our main location remains closed as our new building, Agnes Reimagined, is constructed.

AGNES wishes you a wonderful holiday season and winter break!