This Week at Agnes

Agnes Reimagined comes to life with two new architectural renderings!

Two architectural renderings have emerged from our first year of talking and sharing circles and close architect-client collaboration to give speculative form to our vision.

“Agnes Reimagined is slowly inching toward other museum temporalities, atmospheres, and attitudes to help us erode systems of categorization and separation, transform institutional limitations that hold onto the past and gatekeep the future, and take seriously what really is at stake to ensure museums of the future are alive, nimble, and poised to inhabit the world as it is rightfully changing,” says Emelie Chhangur, Director and Curator at Agnes. Agnes Reimagined wouldn’t be possible without transformational lead gifts with a total $75 million (USD) from Bader Philanthropies Inc!

We look forward to sharing architectural plans as they develop. Join us throughout 2023 in ongoing sharing circles and reciprocal engagement opportunities. Construction is set to begin in spring 2024, and the new building will open in 2026. Read more >

Film Screening, Talk and Reception with Zina Saro-Wiwa

Join us at the Isabel for a special film screening of Zina Saro-Wiwa’s video-performance Worrying the Mask: The Politics of Authenticity and Contemporaneity in the Worlds of African Art (2020). Following the screening, Saro-Wiwa takes to the stage for a talk and Q&A. Sign up >

This program is made possible through funding from the Chancellor Dunning Trust Visitorship, Queen’s University.

Open Secret with Sharlene Bamboat

Screening + Conversation
9 March, 6–8 pm
The Screening Room, 120 Princess St, Kingston
Sign up

Workshop with Sharlene!
10 March, 11:30 am–2:30 pm
In-person at Agnes (for students)
Sign up

Sharlene Bamboat is a moving image and installation artist based in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal. Her practice often engages with translation, history and music, uncovering sensory and fractured ways of knowing. Sharlene regularly collaborates with artists, musicians and writers to animate historical, political, legal, and pop-culture materials. Find out the details about the screening and workshop >

Open Secret features the work of Parastoo Anoushahpour, Kriss Li, Sharlene Bamboat, and Sofía Gallisá Muriente. All screenings are free and open to all. The workshops are free and open only to students.

Curated by Nasrin Himada

Agnes Art Camp

Registration opens on 21 February at 10 am
Fee: $275; members $260
(before and aftercare are included, 8:30–9 am and 4–4:30 pm)
Bursary applications are open >

Calling all creative kids! Join us in Agnes’s André Biéler Studio for Agnes Art Camp—week-long day camps for children ages 6–12. Art Educators and assistants guide small groups of campers in process-based artmaking and interpretation. New and exciting themed activities are planned for each week exploring sculpture, painting, print-making, collage and more.

Bursaries are made possible by the Rita Friendly Kaufman Fund.

Access as Kindness with Lebanese Canadian actor, writer, and curator Yousef Kadoura

In this episode, performer and dramaturg, Yousef Kadoura speaks with Qanita Lilla about living an exuberant life as a disabled performer. Expanding the idea of storytelling and re-defining disability, Yousef talks about navigating belonging in a field populated by able-bodied performers, and reimagining society in the shape of us all, a society that cares for all its actors, both disabled and abled-bodied.

Find the podcast on Digital Agnes, CFRC 101.9’s website, and on your favourite podcasting platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Supported by The George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, Queen’s University; the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Fund; and Young Canada Works Building Careers in Heritage, a program funded by the Government of Canada.

The Relevancy of Art Installations with Leisa Rich

In a dynamic visual and auditory presentation, Leisa Rich traces the history of the ways in which installation art has fulfilled many roles in the human experience. Tracing a historical timeline from ritualistic, spiritual and astrological early traditions, to politicized commentary, and the democratized, broad outreach installation art is creating today, Leisa takes participants on a journey into this inclusive art form. Sign up >

Making Art Work is co-presented by Agnes, Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre and Union Gallery.

Art Hive @Agnes

Artmaking is innately therapeutic and can improve general well-being. We invite adults 16+ to join us and explore the creative process through experimentation and play. Art Hive is free; materials are provided and no prior art experience is necessary. If you are looking for guidance, Harper Johnston, art therapist/facilitator offers weekly projects. Sign up >

Made possible through the generous support of the Birks Family Foundation.

From the Hearth:
Introduction to poetry and spoken word with Billie the Kid

Led by Billie the Kid, From the Hearth, is an in-person poetry and spoken word workshop series that expands our circles of care to embrace the journeys, stories and connections we share as humans. All are welcome and no experience is required. Participants can register for individual workshops, or join the full series. Learn more  and sign up >