ABOUT US
CMCK Public Art was founded by Ciara McKeown in 2017 to further the critical reception of contemporary art in public space. Independent contemporary art curator and writer Diana Sherlock joined CMCK Public Art in 2018. Together, McKeown and Sherlock have over 30 years of curatorial, arts management, and public art experience. We work collaboratively with artists, commissioners, and diverse stakeholders to develop and execute innovative public art projects specific to each context.
CMCK Public Art believes curatorial, context-sensitive approaches to public art foster meaningful connections between people and their environments. We work with artists and community partners to tell stories and cultivate understanding of the contemporary context through art and shared dialogue.
Ciara McKeown is founder and principal of CMCK Public Art, an independent consulting organization with a broad range of clients. She has worked as a public art consultant, curator, director, commissioner, and project manager with arts organizations, government agencies, private developers, and artists across Canada and the US for over fifteen years. McKeown has experience managing large-scale public art projects with multiple stakeholders and developing public art master plans, policies, and strategies. She works closely with artists to contextualize their art practices within the public realm. McKeown is dedicated to furthering critical conversations about contemporary public art through commissioning, research, writing, conferences, and public art events. McKeown has had previous roles at Waterfront Toronto, the City of Calgary and Hamilton Public Art Programs, and with artists Sans façon, among others. She has been an Executive Board Member with Public Art Dialogue and was co-organizer of Public Art: New Ways of Thinking and Working, an international symposium hosted by York University in 2017. She has lectured about public art at universities and arts organizations across Canada and has been published in The Calgary Herald, Alberta Views, and Water Rites: Reimagining Water in the West (University of Calgary Press, Institute for the Humanities, 2018). McKeown holds an MA from New York University and a BA from McGill University.
Diana Sherlock is a Canadian independent curator, visual arts writer, and consultant with CMCK Public Art. She has curated dozens of contemporary art exhibitions and projects for artist-run centres, public galleries, and museums over the last thirty years. Between Things: Alberta Ceramics, co-curated with Lindsey Sharman at the Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton), and the travelling TREX exhibition Mary Shannon Will: dot.dot.dot., are both on view into 2024. In public art, she has produced site-specific projects, served on public art boards and juries, organized artist selection processes, written strategies and plans, and supported artists at all stages of their projects. Author of over eighty texts in gallery catalogues and contemporary art journals internationally, Sherlock is editor of six books including two artist’s monographs, Larissa Fassler: Viewshed (DISTANZ, Berlin, 2022), and Rita McKeough: Works (a special boxset edition including a full-length album and an artist’s multiple, published by EMMEDIA Gallery & Production Society, M:ST Performative Art, and TRUCK Contemporary Art, Calgary, 2018). Sherlock taught curatorial and professional practices at the Alberta College of Art + Design (now Alberta University of the Arts) for twenty years.
CMCK PUBLIC ART 