Robin Arseneault, Balancing Act
ONE Properties, BLVD Beltline, Calgary, Alberta
BLVD Beltline is a premium rental property located in the heart of Calgary’s Beltline neighbourhood. ONE Properties recently announced the commission Balancing Act by Robin Arseneault. The artwork will playfully explore ideas of imagined spectacle and the desired state of “balance,” while acknowledging the area’s histories and the site’s proximity to nearby Stampede Park and developing East Victoria Park.
Having built her career in the city, this is the artist’s first public art commission in Calgary. It is also ONE Properties first public art commission in the city and it aims to create a human-scaled experience for BLVD Beltline residents, visitors, and pedestrians in relation to the towers and urban bustle of MacLeod Trail. It will be an ambitious work that offers a compelling visual aesthetic to complement the bold contemporary architecture.
Project Team: Ellen Cunningham Art Consulting, Ciara McKeown CMCK Public Art Projected Completion 2024
Image: Zoon Media, ONE Properties, BLVD Beltline, Calgary
Tiffany Shaw
Bear Street, Town of Banff
This commission captures Tiffany Shaw’s interest in the life cycles of water in relation to glaciers, how they form and shape the alpine terrain, and how these systems are inextricably linked. The Athabasca Glacier is integral to Banff’s ecosystem. Glaciers embody time, as seen in how glaciation has shaped the mountains and landscape, and express entropy, a measure of energy and transformation from one state to another.
The artist is listening to the glacier. What is it telling us? What does it want? How does it express its character?
CMCK Public Art ran the curatorial commissioning process for the Town and is working with Shaw to develop a context-specific permanent artwork in response to a busy pedestrian corridor in the Rocky Mountains. Projected Completion 2024
Image: CMCK Public Art, Athabasca Glacier, Alberta
City of Kelowna Public Art Plan
A ten-year public art plan to guide the direction of public art in Kelowna with accompanying best practice processes and procedures for commissioning and collection management tailored to the specificities of the place. The working process has prioritized relationships with silyx Okanagan host nation artists, City staff, and arts communities.
Team: Ciara McKeown and Diana Sherlock, CMCK Public Art, Stacey Dyck, SJD Communications
Projected Completion: 2024
Image: SJD Communications, City of Kelowna Public Art Plan engagement process, Situating Art in Public Space: Barbara Cole, Samuel Roy-Bois, Tania Willard, Kelowna Art Gallery, September 21, 2023
Calgary Cancer Centre Art Strategy
Arup Canada Inc.
CMCK Public Art developed an art strategy for the new $1.4 billion dollar cancer research and treatment facility, the largest stand-alone comprehensive cancer centre in Canada. The art strategy included a curatorial vision, commissioning and acquisition processes, and collections management procedures.
City of calgary Public Art Curatorial collection Assessment and Plan
2021-2026
Curatorial Assessment Team: Ciara McKeown, Diana Sherlock CMCK Public Art
Nancy Tousley, Adrian Stimson (advisor)
Collection Plan Team: Ciara McKeown, Diana Sherlock CMCK Public Art
Adrian Stimson and Nancy Tousley (advisors)
Image: Courtesy Adrian Stimson
One of the first curatorial assessments of a municipal public art collection written in North America, it adapted best practices from museum curatorial assessments to analyze the City of Calgary’s Public Art Collection (over 1,200 objects) and provide key insights to inform the Public Art Collection Plan 2021–2026. Using case studies, it analyzed the Public Art Program’s collecting and commissioning practices, collection management, and conservation protocols and made recommendations based on collection and public art commissioning best practices.
A separate document, The City of Calgary Public Art Collection Plan 2021-2026 guides the long-term curatorial development of the collection by outlining commissioning/collecting priorities for the development of the Public Art Collection. Its curatorial approach privileged intentional, context-responsive commissioning and collection processes and criteria over policy-driven ones. The Plan approaches future collection development and management critically to address systemic colonial and patriarchal exclusion in collection development, access, management, and care.
Edmonton Arts Council curatorial assessment of the City of Edmonton Public Art Collection 2021
One of the first curatorial assessments of a municipal public art collection written in North America, it adapted best practices from museum curatorial assessments and developed an intersectional (EDIA) matrix to analyze the collection (262 works), contextualize commissioning best practices through case studies, and make recommendations for the future of public art in Edmonton.
Team: Ciara McKeown, Diana Sherlock, Nancy Tousley
Alberta Public Art Network
City of Medicine Hat
Working collaboratively with the Medicine Hat public art committee for the City’s 2019 Alberta Public Art Network annual summit, CMCK Public Art conceptualized and created a program for the 2019 Alberta Public Art Network annual summit.
Jasper Avenue Streetscape Redevelopment Edmonton Arts Council, Alberta, 2018
This project integrated curatorial strategies for public art within the long-term redevelopment of Jasper Avenue, a 32-block main street in the heart of downtown Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Ciara McKeown worked as a Public Art Curator with City and community partners to develop a critical, long-term vision for how artists could work contextually within Edmonton’s public realm.
Image: Courtesy Edmonton Arts Council
Public Art: New Ways of Thinking and Working Symposium, York University, Toronto, 2017
McKeown co-organized this public art symposium with artist and Professor Brandon Vickerd and a team of arts advisors. Hosted at York University in May 2017, it was the first conference of its kind in Canada to create a platform for international critical dialogue through cross-disciplinary examinations of the field of public art.
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