Positioning the Present, Episode 2 of Uncontainable Collections: Speculative Futures of Objects

Positioning the Present, the second installment of AGYU’s series Uncontainable Collections: Speculative Futures of Objects. This episode features a conversation between our guest, curator Crystal Mowry of the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina, and AGYU curators Clara Halpern, assistant curator, exhibitions, and Lillian O’Brien Davis, curator of collections and contemporary art engagement. This episode of our podcast series, Uncontainable Collections: Speculative Futures of Objects, centres on what it means to focus on “the present” as a stakeholder in public museum collections and how that has the potential to shape the futures of artworks and how communities access them.

Through this dialogue, we discuss care and the role of contemporary artists and non-human intelligences in museums. Mowry gives insight into creating space for untold stories and change, touching on transitions, especially those instigated through acquisition, repatriation, and the recontextualization of objects through new research.