Home-grown academic, educator, and activist Elizabeth Sweeney will be encouraging CAGE 2017 participants to examine their galleries and practice during the Friday, April 21st panel with Clair Dykhuis, Caterin Martin and Bria Millar.
Sweeney, a visual artist, art gallery educator, and curator is also a “queer learning disabled Acadian who grew up in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia”. A long-time CAGE member, Sweeney has worked in the education and public programming departments at the National Gallery, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and Tangled Art + Disability. This summer, she’ll take up a new position with Canada Council. Her panel, “Moving from Adaptation to Reclamation” will lean towards the topic of activist museum praxis and contemporary disability arts.
Recently featured in Muse magazine’s Shifting Definitions of Access issue, Sweeney would like arts workers to consider a change in their practice: “For many museum professionals when we hear ‘access’, we may think of elevators and automatic doors. Others might think of public programs such as tactile tours of sign language interpretation. However, contemporary views of access focus on exhibition development and content.”