2020, Year in Review

Looking back on our activities during a very unusual year

As we come to the end of this very unusual and challenging year, we continue to forge ahead in our mission to provide reliable information sources for research on contemporary visual arts. We would like to highlight some of the work that goes on behind the scenes to maintain and grow our collection as we continue to strive for accessibility of information for our community, now more than ever.  Here are is a  glimpse of what we’ve been up to in the library and with programming this past year: 

 

Cataloged 1099 new publications 

Created 260 new files for artists and arts organizations

Received and processed donations from 61 organizations and 76 individuals

Added 193 new digital publications to our digital repository e-artexte, available in open access

Added 157 new digital publications to our digital repository e-artexte in restricted access. 

Digitized over 120 publications and printed ephemera 

 

The collection team also contributed to several public projects for education and engagement:

 

Created 1 bibliography on textile art

Created 2 educational subject guides 

Co-organized and co-hosted 6 Wikipedia editing workshops as part of the series Wiki X arts actuels 

Created 5 Dégustation de la collection radio segments for Radio atelier

Created 6 virtual tours in English and  French

Recorded 5 interviews with artists and curators, now available on our website and MixCloud 

 

We would also like to extend our sincere gratitude to all of our amazing collection interns and collaborators in 2020, without them this work would not have been possible: Beck Gilmer-Osborn, Frédéric Blouin, Roxane Heer-Desrochers, Daly Sonesaksith, Jonathan Lachance and Julien Champagne. As well as the precious contributions of our volunteers: François Guérin, Katherine Lewis, Johanne Viens, Emeline Vidal, and Geneviève Lacombe.

On the programming side, we are wrapping up an uncommon year where our activities, residencies, and exhibitions began on site, and have since been reconfigured in new forms or postponed. We have reimagined our offerings to our community, as numerous art organizations have, through our virtual platforms:   

 

Presented 2 exhibitions; Prior to the closure, we presented The Empty S(h)elf, an exhibition by artist and Artext co-founder Angela Grauerholz, and Magnetic Sequences curated by Karine Boulanger in collaboration with Joana Joachim. 

Produced 4 editions of the thematic Artexte at Home series that presents interviews with artists and curators, reading lists, and blog articles.

Published 6 articles and interviews on Artexte’s online writing platform, articles 

Organized 1 conference with the artist duo Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak

 

Artexte is grateful to the wonderful artists and researchers who participated or started residencies this year and to those who took part in our virtual programming: Yaniya Lee, Jenny Lin, Sophie Jodoin, Julie Ravary-Pilon, Karine Boulanger, Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak. 

 

We send our thanks to the many writers and researchers who participated in our blog and programming and to our ever-present community for continuing to support our activities throughout a most peculiar year.

 

We look forward to continuing to strive to create new avenues for research in contemporary visual arts. Our collection continues to grow thanks to donations of publications from the visual arts community. We extend our sincere gratitude to all those who have donated to our collection this year. 

 

We encourage you to get in touch with us if you are interested in submitting documentation and publications to our collection or if you have any digitization requests and other research inquiries.