Young Curators of the Future

Supported by funding from Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), KAG was invited to participate in a Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC, virtualmuseum.ca) Experimental Laboratory project—Young Curators of the Future, along with Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Musée d’art de Joliette, Museum London and Southern Alberta Art Gallery.

KAG worked with local high schools to identify students who could participate in the project for extra credits. The Kamloops students who rose to the occasion are Ashya Cross and Katie Taylor-Robertson from Kamloops Christian School and Shannon Charlebois, Lizzy (Elizabeth) Hamblett and Hailey Shae from South Kamloops Secondary. These young curators have been working on the project since September 2009.

Susan Buis, writer and teacher, facilitates the student component of the project in collaboration with KAG staff (including director Jann LM Bailey, manager Beverley Clayton, curator Annette Hurtig, education coordinator Linda Favrholdt and registrar/collections coordinator Trish Keegan). Guest curator Jen Budney also worked with the young curators.

The young curators chose an artwork or a series of artworks from the KAG permanent collection, then researched and wrote a number of articles, including an artist biography, physical description of work, historical record, creative response and/or artist interview. These articles along with photographs of the works were then uploaded to a specifically-designed web-based program where young curators from the other participating galleries and museums across Canada responded to each others’ ‘posts’ and engaged in virtual dialogue about the artworks, artists and articles.

This has been an innovative, intense and exiting experience for all involved, and we are extremely pleased with the outcome.

To see the project, please visit the site when it’s launched in July–www.virtualmuseum.ca/youngcurators