Artful Conversations 2020 Carolyn Jervis interview
Welcome to Artful Conversations - a podcast about arts and cultural management. Hosts Annetta Latham and Katrina Ingram, interview leaders who help shape the world of arts and culture. We share their stories, their insights and observations. This podcast season has been brought to you with the support of MacEwan University and The Rozsa Foundation.
Welcome to Artful Conversations, I'm your host, Annetta Latham. Today I'm speaking with Carolyn Jervis from the John and Maggie Mitchell Gallery at MacEwan University. Carolyn is the founding director, and curator of the John and Maggie Mitchell Gallery. She has been for over a decade engaged in cultural work, focused on curatorial practice, equity and community building. As an art writer and critic, her work has been published nationally, including in the Canadian Arts and Cultural Magazine, as well as exhibition monographs and catalog essays for galleries in Canada and Germany. She's also the sole Canadian in the 2020 cohort of the Getty Leadership Institute, now the Museum Leadership Institute of Claremount Graduate University. This is the next gen executive education program for the next generation of museum leaders. Welcome, Carolyn.
CAROLYN: Thanks for having me, Annetta.
ANNETTA: It's wonderful, wonderful to have this opportunity to chat with you. Tell us a little bit about your career path and how it's influenced you and how you got to where you are today. And what an exciting opportunity this executive training is as well.
CAROLYN: Yes, it sure is. So, you know, I don't think I ever stood a chance in terms of the choice of whether to be a cultural worker or not. It was just stated from childhood. You know, my dad tells the story of me taking out magazines about Diego Rivera in grade one. So, yeah, it was always going to happen. Fated in the stars, I think. But I actually started my undergrad at MacEwan University in the studio art program. And something I discovered very quickly is that I loved talking to my peers about their projects, a lot more than I liked making things myself. And that's the thing that's amazing about an undergrad and what it should do, right, in this discernment period of where you get to dip your toes in and discover in practice what you're interested in and where your strengths are. So various universities happened during my undergrad, and I ended up at the University of Alberta finishing an art history degree with a minor in Women's Studies - Women and Gender studies now. And those were really important connections because, you know, one of the great things about the Women in Gender Studies program at the University of Alberta is it's focused on pracsis. So it was really able to connect some of the historical work that was happening in the programs in my major with thinking about what I was enacting in the world.
Throughout this period, I was thinking that I wanted to be a curator and I would ask anyone who would give me the time of day how to do that. How did you do that? Will you have coffee with me and tell me how you did that and started really at The Works Art and Design Festival in Edmonton. They have a very long standing internship program. So I went through their curatorial department and as a festival, it's a really cosmopolitan space on Churchill Square and you know cosmopolitan in that true sort of bacchian sense of the word, the word of a place where you end up encountering a lot of different a lot of people who are and aren't like you with its proximity to our art sector, the courthouses, the remand center, it's a place where a lot of different people congregate. And so to encounter and work with people and art in that kind of diversity doesn't seem to even completely make clear the amount of difference that people encountered in that space was really formative for me. So I worked there through summers, through my undergrad, and eventually worked there full time in their public art program. And those are really kind of foundational things I worked on, started working on some curatorial projects of my own with Exposure, which was the Queer Arts Festival in Edmonton, and any other kinds of opportunities I could get my hands on. And I eventually found that moment where, you know, grad school needed to happen to unlock that next stage of my career.
So I went to the University of British Columbia and their critical curatorial studies program, which was a fantastic opportunity, again, to get that theoretical rigor, but also have a thesis based program that resulted in an exhibition and writing a catalog that's a really great and right out of that program, started working at the Art Gallery of Alberta in their curatorial department, which really helped in terms of that foundation of best practice and getting that picture of what the public art gallery world was really like and the extent of the work and the complexity of the work and had some pretty foundational moments there. And so I worked there in sort of the curatorial administrative side of things, and then eventually an interpretive programming. So, again, that sort of thinking about that place of encounter between people and art objects has, I think, been that sort of constant theme throughout my career. And then, I had this once in a lifetime opportunity to start a public art gallery from scratch. Well, not from scratch with a lot of support and a lot of things already in the system. But to start it from the ground up at MacEwan which was a bit of a leap of faith as it started as a nine month contract. But how do you not take an opportunity to start something new? There is just so much potential there. And yeah, and that was the, I guess, almost four year journey now of being at MacEwan, and really the gallery and growing together professionally is pretty incredible to have the opportunity to reflect on. There's so much to talk about, I think about what's happened over the past four years.
ANNETTA: It's fantastic and it's wonderful knowledge to have shared. Thank you. One of the questions I get asked repeatedly is how do I become a curator? So I'm putting people in your direction. You kind of summed it up so time and and I was part of the team that brought you on board at MacEwan, at the John and Maggie Mitchell Gallery. And it was an exciting time and it was wonderful and exciting to know we could bring you on board with all your energy and your thoughts about where you want to take the gallery. And definitely I think the thing that really resonated with me in that journey was your conversation around art and community and the connecting between those two. And I think you’ve mentioned that, and it's incredibly important. I think it really depends what the cultural world is actually really about. So taking that and expanding on that, can you elaborate a little bit on the history and the mandate of the John and Maggie Mitchell Gallery and what when we put the call out, what kind of really drew you to it?
CAROLYN: Yeah, absolutely. You know, when I was at UBC [University of British Columbia], I had the opportunity to work at the Morris and Holland Balcon Art Gallery on campus, and it gave me an opportunity to see what a public university art gallery can do, because in Edmonton we didn’t have one. The University of Alberta has this wonderful fine arts building gallery, but because of the number of students and graduate students, it's really focused on graduate exhibitions. So having that up close and personal experience with the public, with the university art gallery, with the public mandate, was really one of the things that kind of lit up my neurons when I saw that call. And I thought about the incredible possibilities of what that could mean for Edmonton and what it could mean for MacEwan University, especially knowing because one of the things that's part of MacEwen's mandate is being the downtown university there is embedded within that is an understanding of the responsibility of the people around them that they have, that there is a responsibility that we have to our neighbors. So that was really, I went in, I over prepared for that interview and I went in with a plan of what I thought should happen, and my recollection, correct me if I'm wrong. But I remember the position of really positioning the gallery as being very focused on faculty, staff and students. But what I thought about what would best serve faculty, staff and students, it was that public mandate was not just exhibiting work internally, but also making sure that we were bringing in and amplifying artist voices locally, nationally, internationally to help build those relationships in that community. And it's pretty wonderful to think about how I thought I was having to really sell it hard. And what I got was a resounding yes, that sounds great. So I think there was a really great confluence of the buy in, in terms of the alignment of values was really great in terms of what I can offer and what the university was looking for and what the faculty of Fine Arts was looking for there.
ANNETTA: So can you explain to listeners what is a public university gallery? What defines that from a university gallery? What's the difference?
CAROLYN: Yeah, absolutely. So in Canada, we have over 40 university art galleries with public mandates, and within that mandate that means we serve the university, but we also serve the community at large. And there's all kinds of important advantages to that. I mean, obviously, I think it's a great thing. But one of the significant things to think about is that, you know, I think more and more there's an emphasis within the academy on the need to do that strong dissemination work that connects people with ideas and and meets them where they are. And so I think a University Art Gallery can be a really important incubator for alternate pedagogical strategies and dissemination strategies for ideas and building some of those relationships with the community. Because sometimes when you walk up to a university, if you're not from that university, it can feel like a scary place where you're not supposed to be. There's a purpose. But the MacEwan and many universities across Canada are public institutions. And so public university, public university art galleries can help serve, helping the university have a more semi-permeable membrane feel like the place that people can come, that they're welcome to visit and help connect them on campus and also thinking about that in an intergenerational way. So we've done some work partnering with our neighbourhood elementary school and with the hope again that some of our neighbours may have never otherwise if they don't have parents that attended university, they have not thought this is a place for them. So they're welcomed into the community. There are great opportunities for building capacities to aspire for children and youth as well.
ANNETTA: So having a almost a public gallery label, does that affect your funding sources that are available to you in the gallery when you think about exhibitions and stuff, or are you solely funded through the university.
CAROLYN: Yeah, that's a great question and absolutely one of the things that a public mandate allows us is that we are able to access public funding. So we have opportunities to work with sort of all three levels of public funding in different ways. So we have the Edmonton Arts Council here, the Alberta Foundation of the Arts provincially, and then the Canada Council nationally. And so we're able to access funding, but there's some important things that we have to do in order to get into to access that. We have to have that public mandate and also on that national level, in terms of accessing Canada Council funding, as a university art gallery, we have to have a full time permanent director, curator, which I am, and our program has to be independent from the university. So, you know, there is no senior official at the university that can come and say your exhibitions have to be about X, Y or Z. So much like academic freedom, there's that kind of element that's baked into how we have to operate in order to access those funds.
ANNETTA: Yeah. Oh, fantastic. So for the listeners who aren't aware, the John and Maggie Mitchell Gallery is actually based in the ground floor of Allard Hall at MacEwan University. So, Carolyn, do you think the location of where the gallery is affects who comes through your doors?
CAROLYN: Oh, one hundred percent. This percentage does increase. So being right on that, one of the interesting things and talking to my peers, so I'm the gallery is part of an organization called the University and College Art Gallery Association of Canada. And one of the things we hear from I hear from peer institutions who have experienced visiting university art galleries. Some of them are tucked or tucked in corners. And you have to know where to find them or find them. And so we're very fortunate in being the heart of the atrium of the main floor of a building. So it means that we have people who drop in intentionally, but we also have people who are just walking through the building and they see an open door and a sign that says welcome and they pop their heads in. It also means that it really encourages walk through traffic, of course, students and faculty and staff. But yeah, we're very fortunate in terms of how our door, our open door addresses the space. On the other hand, one of the things that is a challenge in terms of being embedded within another building is that if you walked up to Allard Hall from the outside, you would have no idea that there was an art gallery inside or a theater or a recital hall. And so, you know, one of our challenges in terms of that street access is continuing to find ways that we can let people know that there are things for them outside, so that's an ongoing conversation that I have with my advisory council, is how to address some of those challenges.
ANNETTA: So on that, can you give us an idea about what kind of strategies you're putting in place to, not only engage your audience, but also to engage artists, to put exhibitions together and those kind of things? So, I mean, there's kind of a two barrelled question, but yeah, tell us some of your strategies.
CAROLYN: In terms of engaging audience, you know, we spend a lot of time. It's important not to go in assuming that because you're doing something cool, that people will just come and that it's just apparent to everyone that what you're doing is interesting. So you have to meet people where they are and let them know what you're doing. So we do a lot of work that's really targeted based on sort of the thematics of the show. So, of the exhibitions and programming that we do develops into how I think about our mandate is wanting to do work that's relevant and timely. And so I think that makes a big difference in terms of outreach. It is organizing your programming around thinking from a place of community need and and making sure you're connected with, you know, even current events right down to what's happening in your community. So the work you're doing is going to mean something to people and with some level of urgency, in fact, and then making sure you're targeting that more specifically. So with our current exhibition, which is called It's About Time Dance and Black in Canada, (1900 - 1970) And now I worked with the students that I work with quite a lot to do a ton of outreach to people. We don't normally connect with - studios across the city and the province. In addition to our usual reaching out to dedicated art audiences, which is with ease with each exhibition, we try to do some of that thematically targeted work for the people who wouldn't necessarily be seeking out a gallery. And I think it's really important to think deeply about those kinds of connections. Yeah, yeah. I think that that enters the first half of your question.
ANNETTA: It does, now, tell us about the artists.
CAROLYN: Yeah, in terms of artist outreach, I guess there's a couple of ways to think about them. One of them is recognizing that an important part of your audience as a gallery is artists, and especially in a city like Edmonton where we're not, there's a level of isolation that we are dealing with. We are the furthest. We are the northernmost city of a million people in North America. And so we don't have that same circulation of people and ideas that you do if you're on the Eastern Seaboard, for instance, or if you're in Vancouver that has this Cascadia connection with Seattle and Portland and those kinds of connections. So there is a relation, there's a responsibility that cultural institutions have to their artists to help facilitate more of that circulation and connection. So and that's something that I really try to take to heart as much as I can. So there's a couple of things that we do in particular to think about those needs. One of them was this past summer we ran a mentorship program, so we had to close the gallery due to our global pandemic. And so we ran a mentorship program instead connecting local emerging artists with an artists that with whom they shared something in terms of their practice or way of working from across Canada to help build those, facilitate the building of those relationships. They weren't going to be able to attend openings and visit other cities themselves. So how can we support building of that network and community? So we had about 18 artists we worked with to help build that. And then usually in the summer I run a mentorship. We run an artists in residency programs, we invited artists to come for extended periods of time. So at least a month ago and as part of the residency, they have to run some sort of public programs and again, as a way to encourage that relationship building with our local community. And those programs are small, but very heavily attended by artists.
ANNETTA: So you've touched on having to change your strategies a little bit due to the pandemic. You, as every curator is always planning months and months and months and months in advance. What strategies are you now having to use in relation to your curatorial planning in this very unstable pandemic environment that we're in?
CAROLYN: I think one of the things that has grounded how I'm trying to approach my work right now, is recognizing that the global pandemic exaggerates and magnifies inequality. Artists are not outside of that right now. Arts and culture is not immune from that larger circumstance. So back in March, when I was trying to decide, when we closed one day, suddenly had to just reimagine everything. I wanted to make sure at the heart of how we did things, we were acknowledging the very difficult circumstances that everybody is working from and working in. One of the things that started to happen over the summer that I noticed is this push to encourage artists to make work about the pandemic and to make and produce and have additional grants that are about producing and making. And so part of what was important to me in making the mentorship program is that we didn't expect people to make much of anything. But it was about a time to think and to talk to other people about what was happening and process. And so I think changing expectations about production are really, really important in an ongoing way. So obviously we commissioned work for our fall exhibition and they were made over the summer. But I've tried to infuse my work with all people with extra grace. And I should say I try to extend that towards myself, too. And that's a kind of leadership I think is trying to model that also in how I'm treating myself. But sometimes things come in late. This afternoon we are supposed to be filming a dance response to our current exhibition. One of the dancers is sick. It's just may be late and that's fine, because the most important thing is that people are cared for and supported and healthy. And so I think I think that's something I'd like to take forward into my work is that is further emphasizing that strengths based approach with everyone and everybody's doing their best which is really hard.
ANNETTA: And I think your statement about infusing everything with extra grace is exactly the direction we should be heading in right now. And a little bit of kindness goes an extremely long way. One of the things that you've mentioned a number of times is the students that you've been working with. And I'm aware that you have students who do this with you and they do volunteer roles. Can you talk about why that's important to you as the founder, director, curator of the gallery, to involve the students in the work of the gallery? And what does that look like for a student? Like what is a practicum?
CAROLYN: Yeah, absolutely. There's a number of different ways in which we work with students at the Mitchell. So they come to us as volunteers and we work with volunteers right across campus, across disciplines. And then we also have practicum students. There is the internal practicum program as part of arts and cultural management, which means that artists get credit for spending 90 hours working at the gallery. And then there's also and again, this is due to our public mandate that we're able to access these things. But in the past, there were currently we are able to access the Young Canada Works program, which is funded through Canadian heritage, but administered through the Canadian Museums Association, to have students and recent graduates come work with us in positions that they help support. The way I approach working with students is, again, really based in that kind of strength based approach and meeting them where they're at. Every student I've worked with has come to me with a different skillset, background, capacity, gifts. And so I don't approach the practicum like everyone does the same thing each semester. They're responsible for X, Y and Z. Each semester I sit down with them and I find out why they're interested in working with the gallery, what they're passionate about, what they want to learn, what would best serve where they want their career to go, and then we tailor projects specifically to their skills and interests and needs. Yeah, and that's one of the advantages of being quite small is that I'm able to work, I think it's quite a gift to get to work in this very relational way. And I really take it on from a mentorship perspective. And I think that's the thing I'm learning this year is figuring out how much I can infuse mentorship into every element of every program we do, because I think relationships are positive, supportive relationships are just everything.
ANNETTA: Yeah, fantastic. So let's talk about your role at the gallery. So for you, what has been your main focus as a curator of a gallery?
CAROLYN: You know, I think one of the things that's really interesting about my sort of dual role as director curator is that in some ways I think my curatorial practice has, overtakes the way I think about the direction of the gallery in total. So by that, I mean, I feel like when I work with guest curators, I'm still approaching it as a curator, that I'm curating curators. But all of our programming fits this like iterative learning process and that it's, all is serving this sort of this generative creative practice, if that makes sense All of the work, not just our exhibitions, our programming is not separate from that. And I think, again, it can be it could be easy to look at the gallery and be like, that's difficult because it's you only have one staff person who works for you 14 hours a week. But there's also some beautiful things about how connected everything gets to be because we're small. So that's sort of my meta answer. And I think what I'm most interested in is having my curatorial practice driven by thinking about what it is that galleries can do. So to give it more specific example of that is that I try to use our programming to inform the way that we operate structurally, because often you have an exhibition about an idea. It happens for 12 weeks or something. And then it ends and it's over and you're done with it. There was so much knowledge that we get from artists and learning from artworks. And so that needs to inform the way we have to take that on, too. We can't just face outwards to the public and be like the public, this is what you need to learn. You also have to apply that to yourself. So one of the examples I like to give you this was a couple of years ago we had an exhibition called Mothering Spaces that was created by Becca Taylor and one of the core elements of this exhibition, which was exploring ideas of indigenous motherhood and featured a number of indigenous artists who were all mothers, was that the absolute requirement that their children travel with them and are part of all facets of their work. So the Ephemerals who are all from an artist collective out of Winnipeg there, each of us at the time had six year olds in the six year olds were the first one in the gallery. We paid for them to be there. We paid for child care and learning from those women and learning from that indigenous knowledge, we now make sure that child care is an important part of every conversation we have with every artist, because that is a barrier to participation. So that's not just learning for the public, that's learning for the gallery. It needs to now be part of our structure to be part of policy.
ANNETTA: Yeah, fantastic. So upcoming plans for the gallery any secrets you know you can reveal, behind the curtain.
CAROLYN: You know, I'd say this is the most I'm a I'm a big dreamer, and so it's this has been one of the challenges of the pandemic has been thinking ahead because of the amount of uncertainty of what is it that's going to feel meaningful and important to talk about in Fall, 2021. Yeah, I don't I don't know, I don't know the answer. So I have lots of exhibition ideas and programming coming down the pipe. But I want to make sure that I am not just working in the future because it's easiest to organize, but there's a relationship that I'm continuing to have about what's meaningful and recognizing that that's a target that's moving faster than usual. So that's that's a bit of a non-answer Annetta.
ANNETTA: It's a very curatorial answer actually
CAROLYN: So I actually I guess the other thing I would say is that we're deepening our inquiry into the politics of our location geographically. So we're going to be announcing pretty soon a project that we're doing that engages with the neighborhood that we're located in. So one of the things that's been fascinating to me as a curator and thinking about the gallery in the university is thinking about how MacEwan University is sitting on an old rail line. So it's like this long, narrow campus of buildings stacked next to each other, east to west, and it forms a little bit of a wall. Right, that extends across, and and so we are sort of this touch point between the neighborhood to our north and to the south. And so what does it mean to re-inscribe a rail line? What is our responsibility to that neighbourhood that we have, you know, like the barrier to access thinking about like how you have to move through parking lots if you're in central McDougal in order to get to MacEwan. And so we've started some work, as I mentioned, with the local elementary school. But we're going to be creating a project that's really dedicated to building relationships in the neighbourhood in a way that's artist and community led. So I can't tell you the project looks like because it's not for me to say or decide -it is going to be up to artists and be in working together,
ANNETTA: That it's really exciting. And just so the listeners are, we're one of the things that Carolyn's referred to is the linearness of the MacEwan University campus. And that on one side is a, is more predominantly low socio economic and on the other side, it's a higher socio economic and MacEwan literally is the wall between these two things, because we have a MacEwan campus, there is no building that is less than three stories high. So it's a very interesting dialog. So this is really exciting and, you know, we look forward to seeing what's coming up. So for yourself, where do you see your career heading in the next five years?
CAROLYN: You know, that's a question I've been thinking about a lot lately, and I think part of it is because of being in the the next-gen program at the Leadership Institute, I've had this opportunity. I work with a mentor, too, and we have these conversations and I've had some experiences this year that have these ideas you have about your trajectory. Once you start living out your career, they change. And that's a normal and healthy thing. And so I feel like I'm in a discernment period of trying to figure out what it is that I want because I've had this beautiful opportunity to have such engaging work and to be empowered to grow within my position at the Mitchell yeah, I'm trying to decide what that's what that's going to look like. And I think part of that, too, is in this sort of dualistic role of doing all the jobs. Basically, I think of at some point it's going to have to focus a little bit more again. And so which of those directions do I want to hone in on in terms of expertise? Because there's a lot of opportunities to grow in terms of the potential of curatorial studies and supporting, beefing up sort of the educator role and focusing on curation. I've really let writing fall to the wayside and I’m missing that. So I think part of what the MLI program is doing for me is giving me a chance to step back from where I thought I wanted to go to reevaluate and think critically about what it is that in actuality now, based on how I've grown, I know what I want and need, and that's really exciting.
ANNETTA: Thank you for this wonderful opportunity to chat with you. Is there anything else you'd like to add to our conversation today before we finish?
CAROLYN: Oh, I will. Thank you so much for asking, I'm really appreciative of that, and that you think the work that we're doing at the gallery is worth this conversation. And it's always great to have an opportunity to reflect on what it is you're doing. Often reflection is the thing that gets put to the wayside. So, yeah, I appreciate the opportunity.
ANNETTA: And Carolyn, again, it's been wonderful chatting with you and I'm sure that you've given everybody a lot to think about and you have done an exceptional job. And for me, it's been an absolute privilege watching the journey over the last four years. And so thank you for taking the time today to chat with us. And I look forward to seeing you on campus when we get back in the building.
CAROLYN: Yes, yes. I look forward to that, too. Thanks, Annetta.
Analysis
ANNETTA: Katrina, this interview with Carolyn Jervis was just absolutely amazing. I have known Carolyn for a wee while, but I think one of the things that really amazes me about what Carolyn does in her work is her awareness of her audience. And, you know, I don't think there’s very many of us who have jobs where if you exit one door you have one demographic of audience, if you exit a door on the opposite side of the building, you have another demographic and then you have a whole different demographic that's actually inside your building. And she's got to figure out how to reach out to all of them and understand them all. And I just think and doing that in a gallery frame as well, I think it's extraordinary.
KATRINA: It really is Annetta and that was on my mind, too, as I listened to this interview, the piece about location, because of course I'm super familiar with this gallery and where it sits in terms of the landscape at MacEwan. But thinking about the marketing challenge of being embedded within another building and having to meet these specific marketing and communications needs and strategies to reach different audiences based on, as you say, all of these different audiences being quite different, depending on which door you exit. I think that's a tremendous challenge. And it was really interesting to hear her talk about how she addresses that in the course of her work.
ANNETTA: Definitely and I think one of the things that has been really interesting from my perspective is that this is actually a public gallery that sits inside a university and a lot of university galleries are just university galleries. And so Carolyn is not only navigating all her audiences that wrap around her building and are in her building, but is also in a Canadian-wide classification of galleries that she's kind of competing with. And I think she is a wonderful, wonderful steward of our gallery and an amazing curator. And I think it really comes out in her interview. Incredible talent, really, incredible talent.
KATRINA: Yeah, absolutely. I also really appreciate how she talked about curating in a pandemic and the unique challenges around that and how it magnifies inequality and arts and culture kind of lives within these circumstances. And she talked about having this extra amount of grace and kind of honoring the fact that we're in some pretty extraordinary times. And so she took this really human approach. It was really lovely hearing that. And she also talked about the benefits of being a smaller gallery. And sometimes we think, oh, we must have all the resources in order to do wonderful things. But sometimes being smaller can give you some flexibility and have you have a more nimble approach to things. And so I was just fascinated by her story and just learning more about the work that she's doing.
This show was created by Executive Producer and Host Annetta Latham; Co-host Katrina Ingram. Technical Producer Paul Johnston. Research Assistants involved were Caitlin McKinnon and MacEwan bachelor of music students.
Theme Music by Emily Darfur and cover art by Constanza Pacher. Special thanks to the Rose Foundation for their support and to our guests. Artful Conversations is a production of MacEwan University and Assistant Professor Annetta Latham, all rights reserved.
Latham, A. (Executive Producer and Host). Regan-Ingram, K (Host). (2020, November 20) [Season 2: Episode 10]. Carolyn Jervis. Podcast retrieved from: https://www.artfulconversations.com/season-2-1/2021/2/6/ep-10-carolyn-jervis