Advocating for Creativity: Patricia Bovey on Arts Activism..

"Advocating for Creativity: Patricia Bovey on Arts Activism & Cultural Policy"

Open to the public, all welcome.
Free admission.

How can we better advocate for artists in Canada? What role can cultural policy play in securing artists’ material conditions and advancing their interests? And, how can we build broader coalitions to support arts and culture initiatives? Join us for a presentation and discussion considering these pressing questions. Featuring author, museum professional, and former Senator Patricia Bovey, this event will focus on strategies for arts activism, address the current cultural policy landscape in Canada, and identify pressing areas for future policy advocacy.

This event is jointly hosted by the Practitioner Media Lab in the Faculty of Information & Media Studies and the Department of Visual Arts.

Speaker

Patricia Bovey, member of the Senate of Canada (2016-2023) and the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s Director Emerita, is a Winnipeg-based art historian, museologist, author and professor. She has published extensively on western Canadian art, including Western Voices in Canadian Art, (2023); Pat Martin Bates: Balancing on a Tread, a 2015 Alberta Book Awards’ recipient; and Don Proch: Masking and Mapping, a 2019 Manitoba Book Awards’ finalist. 

Director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery (1999-2004); the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (1980-1999);  and founding Director/Curator of St Boniface Hospital’s Buhler Gallery, (2007-2016), she also taught Canadian Art, Curatorial Practice, Cultural Resource Management, and in the University of Winnipeg’s MA Curatorial Practicum. An independent consultant, she assisted arts organizations across Canada with governance, funding and strategic planning. In the Senate she gave voice to the importance of the arts with special Senate exhibitions, programs, reports, and legislation unanimously passed by the Chamber.

Former Chair of the Board of Governors of both the University of Manitoba and Emily Carr University, she served on the National Gallery of Canada’s Board of Trustees; the Board of the Canada Council for the Arts; the Withrow/Richard Federal Task Force on National and Regional Museums; the Eckhardt-Gramatté Foundation Board; and is a past chair of the Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization.

She received a University of Manitoba Honorary Doctor of Laws in 2021, and is a Fellow of both the UK’s Royal Society for the Arts, and the Canadian Museums Association. Her honours include the Canada 125 Medal; the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal; Winnipeg’s Woman of Distinction for the Arts; the Canadian Museums Association Award of Distinguished Service; the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Medal; the Association of Manitoba Museums’ Inaugural Award of Merit; and the Winnipeg Arts Council Making a Difference Award.

Moderator

Sarah E.K. Smith is Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair in Art, Culture and Global Relations. She is based in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University in London, Ontario, where she runs the Practitioner Media Lab. Her writing and curatorial projects address contemporary art, cultural diplomacy, and creative labour. Sarah is co‐founder of the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative, a multi-disciplinary research network of academics, policymakers, and practitioners in the field of critical cultural diplomacy. She is also a member of the International Cultural Relations Research Alliance.