Celebrating our 40th anniversary in 2018, the Art Gallery of Guelph took this opportunity to articulate a bold new direction with an expanded imagination of its future as a vital creative space locally and nationally that contributes to significant dialogues on an international stage.
This means AGG will advance the arts globally as a leader in innovative, impactful, and inclusive programming. This is our vision. Our strategic plan outlines this new vision and asserts the gallery’s priorities that will advance this goal – our commitment to offering leadership in artistic development, our desire to build engagement and create social impact. It affirms our focus on inclusive programming that reflects and engages our diverse communities, including reconciliation with Indigenous communities. This responsiveness extends to explorations of our relationship to our environment itself, speaking to our location in Guelph, with its historic, social, and economic links to the land and to agriculture, while connecting us to wider conversations around the world.
Through this plan, we will cultivate innovation through interdisciplinarity and interactivity, including digital directions for the gallery, transforming how we work and providing the public with unprecedented access to our important and unique resources. The gallery’s collections represent over three centuries and more than 10,000 artworks with a strong focus on Indigenous and contemporary Canadian art. It is home to the Donald Forster Sculpture Park as well, the largest outdoor sculpture collection at a public art gallery in Canada. Innovation will extend to new opportunities for public engagement with all of our programming, and with digital artistic practices.
Finally, we will strengthen our governance and administration to support our capacity to meet these goals as well as future challenges, and to take advantage of emerging opportunities. In doing so, we will ensure the AGG is engaged in mutually beneficial relationships with leading local, national and international arts organisations, community partners and financial supporters. Strengthening our connection to community, yet focused on a sustainable future in a global context, the evolution of artistic vision and organizational capacity serve as the core for this document and speak to the next phase of the Art Gallery of Guelph’s strategic vision and direction.
ReimAGGination 2018-2023: Art Gallery of Guelph Five Year Strategic Plan
