Middlebrook Prize awarded to Erin Szikora

The Art Gallery of Guelph (AGG) is pleased to announce that Erin Szikora has been awarded the 2022 Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators. Her proposed exhibition, Homecoming, has been selected as the winning submission to be presented at the Art Gallery of Guelph from September 15 – December 18, 2022. This year’s Middlebrook Prize jury was composed of Darryn Doull (Curator, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery), Jaimie Isaac (Chief Curator, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria), and Bushra Junaid (Independent Curator).

Created in 2012, the annual prize is awarded to a Canadian curator or curatorial team under 30 with the goal to support a resilient, sustainable, and inclusive arts sector in Canada. “Not only does the partnership between the Middlebrook Prize and the Art Gallery of Guelph provide a unique professional development opportunity at a critical point in their careers, the recipients recognized over the last ten years have shaped curatorial practice indelibly,” notes AGG Executive Director Shauna McCabe. The Middlebrook Prize also builds awareness of the vital role of artistic expression in an era of ongoing and unprecedented economic, political, environmental, and social upheaval. “Erin is among the country’s best and brightest young curators with a clear sense of the transformative potential of the arts as a force for social change,” states Prize founder Randall Howard.

Szikora’s exhibition Homecoming brings together artists Anita Cazzola, Laura Grier, and Justine Woods, and emerges from her curatorial research into alternative economies of artmaking and valuation. Supporting relationship-building as a key element of exhibition design, the artists will be invited to create new works in relation to the idea of returning home and the activities, people, and places that provide safety, stability, and security, all of which have been particularly difficult to locate lately. “As a curator,” states Szikora, “I strive to create opportunities for emerging and mid-career artists, to make space for under-told stories that disrupt and expand the canon, and most importantly, to build caring and lasting relationships with the communities that sustain me.”