Congratulations Isabelle & Sophie Lynch!

Winners of the Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators

We are pleased to announce that Isabelle and Sophie Lynch have been awarded the 4th Annual Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators. Their project, Blood, Sweat and Tears (working title), has been selected as the winning submission and will be featured at the Art Gallery of Guelph from September 15 through December 18, 2016.

The jury included Alison Cooley (2014 Middlebrook Prize Recipient with Natasha Chaykowski), Melissa Bennett (Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Hamilton) and Robert Enright (Research Professor in Art Theory and Criticism, University of Guelph and Senior Contributing Editor, Border Crossings).

Sophie and Isabelle Lynch’s proposed project, Blood, Sweat and Tears, tackles urgent, enduring questions of labour with deftness and sophistication. Their proposal demonstrates solid insight and attunement to contemporary art’s stakes, both in the idea of artistic production as work, and in broader issues of labour that touch audiences outside the visual arts.

In Blood, Sweat and Tears, the curators will question how value is created and extracted from labouring bodies. They ask: how can we re-think notions of work and productivity, and how bodies move and interact with space and materials? Through the work of contemporary artists working in video, performance, and installation, this exhibition focuses on the human body’s relationship to work and the subjective dimensions of productive and unproductive labour. The artists under consideration include: Kerry Downey (Ft. Lauderdale, FL), Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens (Montreal/Durham-Sud, QC), Virginia Lee Montgomery (New York, NY/Chester, VT), Tanya Lukin Linklater (Native Village of Afognak and Port Lions, AK/North Bay, ON), and Mika Rottenberg (New York, NY).

As part of their engagement in the Guelph community, the curators plan to conduct studio visits with artists in the local region with the objective to invite a Guelph artist to contribute to the exhibition. Their outreach program will encourage the public to take part in a day of workshops, readings, presentations, and performances. For families, the curators’ have created a event that will invite kids to work together to build a Rube Goldberg machine with found objects.

Adam Barbu

Adam Barbu is an independent writer and curator currently living in Ottawa. He has produced contemporary art exhibitions nationally and internationally that explore themes of cultural memory, the politics of spectatorship, and alternative modes of public engagement. His current critical research focuses on queer theory, “post AIDS” discourses, and early minimalist art. In fall 2015, Barbu will begin his M.A. in Art History at the University of Toronto.

Al Miner

Al Miner is the Founding Director/Chief Curator of the Georgetown University Art Galleries where he is also Associate Professor of the Practice in Museum Studies).  Miner oversaw the final construction of the Maria & Alberto de la Cruz Art Gallery, establishing the vision, policies, and program for the University’s flagship exhibition space that opened in August 2018. There he organized the inaugural exhibition, Jeffrey Gibson: DON’T MAKE ME OVER as well as Glenn Ligon: To be a Negro in this country is really never to be looked at, currently on view. Miner previously spent seven years as a Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, where he curated Ori Gersht: History Repeating, as well as the award-winning Megacities Asia, among other projects. Prior to the MFA, he spent five years in the curatorial division of the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Miner has received fellowships and grants from numerous organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Association of Art Museum Curators, and the American Alliance of Museums.