DEXTERITY
A series of lectures, reflecting the variety of initiatives that are being generated by university art galleries across the country, will provide a context for the work done at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery and a means to highlight the scope of the research that is being undertaken by these university galleries.

The Art of Seeing with Nicole Knibb
Thursday September 13 2012
At the Gallery, in English

The Art of Seeing is an innovative visual literacy course developed by McMaster Museum of Art with the McMaster Department of Family Medicine for residents in Family medicine. The course was introduced at McMaster University because a number of important studies have shown that careful and intensive observation of art improves doctors’ diagnostic and observational skills. The objective for The Art of Seeing is to improve observation skills and enhance empathy and self-reflection in physicians by examining original artworks from McMaster University’s collection.

Nicole Knibb is the Education Coordinator at the McMaster Museum of Art, responsible for developing innovative programs for McMaster University’s academic community, most notably The Art of Seeing. On a broader scale, Nicole designs and delivers tours and learning activities to meet the needs of pre-school, elementary, secondary, post-secondary school groups and visitors from the local, national and international community. This includes developing a successful Docent and Volunteer program that encourages members of the community to learn about the function of the Museum and to be an essential part of the Museum’s work. Nicole plays a key role in fulfilling the Museum’s mission for dynamic and multi-disciplinary programs, scholarly interpretation and innovative practices in museology.

ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Elder, N.C. et al. The Art of Observation: impact of a Family Medicine and Art Museum Partnership on Student Education. Family Medicine 38.6 (2006): 393-398.

Kirklin D. et al. Cluster Design Controlled Trial of Arts-Based Observational Skills Training in Primary Care. Medical Education 41.4 (2007): 395-401.

Naghshineh, Sheila et al. Formal Art Observation Training Improves Medical Students’ Visual Diagnostic Skills. Journal of General Internal Medicine 23.7 (2008): 991-997.

Schaff, Pamela .B., S. Isken, and Robert M. Tager. From Contemporary Art to Core Clinical Skills: Observation, Interpretation, and Meaning-Making in a Complex Environment. Academic Medicine 86.10 (2011): 1272-1276.

Zazulak, Joyce et al. The Creative Art of Medical Inquiry: A Visual Literacy Program for Family Medicine Residents. Museums & Social Issues 5.2 (2010): 250-257.

Door to Door with Christof Migone
Thursday September 20, 2012
At the Gallery, in English

The curatorial premise of Door to Door is unabashedly utopic, it engages frontally with the implicit article of faith that art can act as a force of engagement, a conversation trigger, a tool for creative reflection. There is no naive presumption that reception will always be positive, or that we will be welcomed. There is no fetishization of the encounter. With Door to Door we are heeding part of Brian O’Doherty’s call in the very last sentence of his essay The Gallery as a Gesture: “Or the gallery itself could be removed and relocated to another place.” Here the gesture is even more radical, it is no longer off-site, but site-less. Door to Door shifts the question to one of exchange and investigates the specificity of where public space meets private domicile. The audience is no longer the passerby but the resident, the occupant, the one who answers the door.

Christof Migone is an artist, curator and writer. His work and research delves into language, voice, bodies, performance, intimacy, complicity, endurance. He currently lives in Toronto and is a Lecturer in the Department of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga and the Director/Curator of the Blackwood Gallery.

READ Books with Kathy Slade
Wednesday October 3, 2012
At the Gallery, in English

Kathy Slade will present a talk on publication projects at the Charles H. Scott Gallery at Emily Carr University. Slade’s presentation will focus primarily on READ Books and the Emily Carr University Press. READ Books is a bookstore that centres on artists’ books, editions, monographs, exhibition catalogues, critical theory, poetry, design and magazines. READ is an ongoing public programme of the Charles H. Scott Gallery that functions as a site for discourse on artists’ publishing and regularly hosts artist residencies, talks, readings, and book launches. The ECU Press developed out of the activities of READ and since 2006 has published artists’ books, monographs and selected writings of artists and critics.

Vancouver artist Kathy Slade works across various media including film, video, embroidery, sculpture, vinyl records, and books. Together with Keith Higgins she runs Publication Studio Vancouver. She collaborates with Brady Cranfield under the moniker Cranfield & Slade and as Co-Director of The Music Appreciation Society. Slade is the founding editor of Emily Carr University Press and in 1999 she started READ Books at the Charles H. Scott Gallery. Slade’s work has been exhibited in North America, Europe, and Asia. Her recent exhibitions include Kathy Slade and Lisa Roberston: It was a strange apartment; full of books… (Malaspina, Vancouver), IS EVERYTHING GOING TO BE ALRIGHT? (Audain Gallery, Vancouver), Barroco Nova (Museum London, ON), Die Perfetk Astellung (Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg), and Cue: Artists’ Video (Vancouver Art Gallery). In 2009 she received the VIVA Award and in 2012 she was Artist in Residence at Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna.

Community Art Lab with Vicky Chainey Gagnon and Yaël Filipovic
Thursday October 18, 2012
At the Gallery, in English

Vicky Chainey Gagnon (Director/Curator, Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University) and Yael Filipovic (former Curator, Education and Cultural Action, Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University) will discuss the Community Art Lab – a special mediation project aiming to explore from a creative point of view the pressing social issues of our day and how these affect our direct community. Based in Sherbrooke, Quebec, the Lab has been in operation for the past 4 years and under the coordination of a professional Curator of Education and Cultural Action since 3 years. In that time, the Lab has generated contact with over 3000 children, youth, adults and senior citizens, proving that there is a viable dimension and a critical importance to civically engaged public programming.

Since 2005, Vicky Chainey Gagnon is Director/Curator of the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University. She has curated a wide range of exhibitions with Canadian and international artists: Value, 2012; Charles Stankievech: Over the Rainbow, Under the Radar, 2011; Christina Battle: Filing Memory, 2010; Ron Benner: Growing Histories, 2010; Above and Below, 2009; Clive Holden: Utopia Suite Disco, 2008; Time Inside the Image I-III, 2005-2007). Her research scope is contemporary curatorial practice with specific interest in the intersections of social theory, civic engagement and public scholarship. She is the founder of the Foreman Art Gallery’s Community Art Lab, a cultural mediation project that appropriates civic spaces in the local community with the goal of building relationships between citizens.

Yaël Filipovic is an education curator. She holds an MA in Museum Studies from the University of Toronto and a BA in Art History and Education from McGill University (Montreal). Her work combines her interest in research, art, activism and pedagogy. Past curatorial projects include Neighbour to Neighbour: Living Libraries (Foreman Art Gallery, 2011), ArtiFACTS of Belief (University of Toronto Art Centre, 2010), and Soliloquies: Reflections of Solitude (Two Rivers Gallery, 2008). Interested in the use of public space, her public interventions have taken place in both Toronto and Montreal. From May 2010 to August 2012, she was the Curator, Education and Cultural Action at the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Quebec developing their Community Art Lab. She has held curatorial and public programs positions in various institutions across Canada including at the Darling Foundry Visual Arts Centre (Montreal, QC), the Justina M Barnicke Gallery (Toronto, ON), and the Two Rivers Gallery (Prince George, BC).

Artist’s Book of the Moment (ABoTM) with Michael Maranda
Wednesday October 24, 2012
At the Gallery, in English

The presence of non-craft-based artists’ books in the contemporary art scene is conflicted. While artists’ books travel well, and are aimed at wide distribution, their very accessibility can make them an odd fit for galleries, both public and private. As essentially books, they are best read on the terms of the viewer, something the all-too-often seen exhibition device of books behind glass works against quite successfully. On the other hand, commercial galleries have little interest in the genre as their generally low-price on the primary market gives little incentive to support or dissemination by gallerists. The AGYU Artists’ Book of the Moment competition, an annual juried prize, is an attempt to serve the genre in a way that encourages the circulation of artists’ books outside of formal display practices, all the while offering critical recognition and support of the field and its practitioners.

Michael Maranda is a visual artist currently living and working in Toronto. He has broad experience with publishing in the visual arts sector, from managing and editing BlackFlash and Fuse Magazines through to publishing catalogues for the Art Gallery of York University. His practice consists primarily of the production of artists’ books, as publisher and author. He was educated at the University of Ottawa, Concordia University, and the University of Rochester.