Notice Board

Art NOW Series - Ciara McKeown
Public Art and Monumentalism: Exploring dominant structures through spatial relations in public art

This talk deconstructs monumentalism from a feminist perspective. It questions dominant approaches to public art that privilege iconic, large-scale and permanent works. It develops a more contemporary narrative of anti-monumentalism by discussing public artworks and practices rooted in gesture, process and dialogue.

Biography

Ciara McKeown is a public art commissioner, curator, director and project manager, and has worked with multiple arts organizations across Canada and the US for over a decade. She was recently a Project Manager with artists' Sans façon, working collaboratively to complete the CSO Art Master Plan for King County, 4Culture in Seattle, and PLUS, the Succession Plan for Watershed+, City of Calgary’s renowned public art project. McKeown is currently managing her own business researching, writing and working with clients on public art planning and commissioning. She is currently the Public Art Curator for Edmonton Arts Council's Jasper Avenue Streetscape project.

Ciara is an Executive Board Member with Public Art Dialogue, and was Co-Organizer of Public Art: New Ways of Thinking and Working, a symposium hosted by York University in May 2017, the first of its kind in Canada that invited cross-disciplinary perspectives and research to critically examine the current state of Canadian contemporary public art practices. She has lectured on public art at Esker Foundation, The University of Calgary, McMaster University, and has written in The Calgary Herald, Stephen Magazine, Public Art Review, Americans for the Arts, and her essay on Watershed+ was recently published in the University of Calgary’s Institute for the Humanities Water in the West catalogue. Ciara holds an M.A from New York University and a B.A from McGill University.

Image: Sarah Sze, Corner Plot, 2006. Photo credit: Tom Powel. Commissioned by Public Art Fund, New York.