Moss Projects History

In 2020, after a year of dreaming, Michelle Jacques and Toby Lawrence officially embarked on the development of the Moss Projects: Curatorial Learning + Research program, an itinerant educational space that aims to create knowledge- and relationship-building opportunities for curatorial thinkers who are committed to peeling away the colonial layers of the art museum, within the context of Turtle Island/North America. Addressing a need for alternative or parallel program to academic curatorial training, Moss Projects explores and supports inquiry and learning by and with individuals identifying as Indigenous, Black, and People of Colour alongside allied practitioners through peer-to-peer learning, mentorship, and individualized curriculum tailored to the needs of participants. Central to this program is the valuing of diverse knowledge systems and modes of organization beyond (and in dialogue with) dominant parameters of curation, and the recognition of the urgency with which we must learn to work otherwise in the museum field.

As white settler and Black Canadian curators, Toby and Michelle are building Moss Projects as a collaborative, reflexive, and praxis-based process, utilizing our professional resources for curatorial incubation and to establish spaces and mechanisms for sharing cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary methodologies. By engaging with our own individual ancestral histories and by respecting the cultural knowledges shared with us, we are learning how our histories fit within the places that we reside and work, to better advocate for and walk alongside in support of Indigenous and non-dominant methodologies. At a moment when the colonial foundations of mainstream museums are being rocked in protest, how do we prepare to build something new? As we shift our own practices, we continually reflect on the ethics required and ask ourselves: who needs to be involved, and how?

In the Canadian context, curators continue to be trained predominantly through settler-colonial and academic art, art historical, and curatorial paradigms, which shapes and influences the historical narrative. A significant obstacle within this art system is the stronghold of the idea of expertise, upholding the teacher or curator as the authoritative ‘expert.’ Horizontal and co-learning methods give equal value to the knowledge of all participants, regardless of position, title, or discipline. By inviting and compensating collaborators with a range of experiences, ideas, and worldviews to participate in Moss Projects, we aim to create a platform that promotes multidimensional readings of the museum’s potential, countering its legacy as a space devoted to a singular canon. Similarly, Moss Projects is not institutionally bound, but presently operates independently with the institutional relationships and support that we hold and actively foster, alongside funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council. Our first host, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, where Michelle was previously Chief Curator, stands as an important point of departure; a public art museum with a developing openness to examine its own structure, and, at the same time, an example of residual and prevailing legacies of colonial systems throughout the arts in Canada. Applying pressure, Moss Projects nurtures practices that require the art system to flex to accommodate the needs of historically underrepresented practitioners and communities, rather than the need to flex to a system that is an uncomfortable, and sometimes unsafe, fit. We are co-learners in these processes.

With the successful acquisition of provincial and federal arts funding, Mel Granley, the inaugural Moss Projects curatorial resident in 2020, joined the Moss Projects team to undertaking the collaborative development and facilitation of the project throughout 2023 and 2024. In its current stage of development and prototyping, Moss Projects is exploring innovative pedagogies through the implementation of a series of Curatorial Gatherings.

Guiding objectives:

a)     valuing diverse knowledge systems and modes of organization beyond (and in dialogue with) dominant parameters of curation;

b)     recognizing the urgency with which we must learn to work otherwise in the curatorial field by developing shareable resources that speak to new, sustainable models for the future;

c)     sharing knowledge through reciprocal learning; participants agree to share knowledge with respective co-workers and colleagues and actively participate in expanding curatorial practice;

d)     providing non-cost-prohibitive access to professional development for diverse curators;

e)     building strategies for understanding and addressing the systemic challenges across the arts sector;

f)      prioritizing flexibility and accommodation for participant obligations (family, community, work) or restrictions (time, money);

g)     testing pedagogical models through Curatorial Intensives alongside modes not-yet identified;

h)     establishing social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as essential to current curatorial discourse towards the shifting of curatorial practice beyond colonial legacies and systemic challenges.

Anticipated impacts:

a)     establishing support for deeper understanding and learning through different ways of knowing and relationship-building by drawing together intergenerational and intercultural cohorts;

b)     demonstrating precedent and clearly illustrating the importance of models that address social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, as many people are unable to imagine what they have not yet seen;

c)     requiring art institutions to flex to the needs of historically underrepresented communities, rather than the need to flex to a system that is an uncomfortable, and sometimes unsafe, fit; and

d)     interrogating our own positionalities in relation to the Indigenous territories we live and work in and to default behaviours to better understand our own contributions to continuing systemic discrimination, toward ceasing harmful practices.

Aspirations:

a)   increased and meaningful presence of racialized and underrepresented curators, artists, arts workers, and communities within North American art museums and organizations;

b) frequent employment of new and non-dominant curatorial methodologies within North American art museums and organizations.