Cross-Border Dialogues

Launching in the fall of 2023, Cross-Border Dialogues features a series of conversations connecting curators and programmers in the United States and Canada.

Location Online (Zoom)

Price Free

Cross-Border Dialogues is a series of conversations with speakers who work in the cultural sector from Canada and the United States, addressing a range of topics including the philosophies that inform their work, their methods for engagement, and the role of education and community outreach in their respective practices.

Upcoming talks:

Tamara Toledo (Director/Curator, Sur Gallery, Toronto) and Marcela Guerrero (DeMartini Family Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York)
Thursday, April 4 at 6:30 pm ET on zoom

Past talks:
Cross-Border Dialogues: Ryan Rice and heather ahtone
Cross-Border Dialogues: Crystal Mowry and Daniel Atkinson
Cross-Border Dialogues: Julie Crooks and Kelli Morgan
Cross-Border Dialogues: Michelle Jacques and Kimberli Gant

About the presenters

Daniel Atkinson

Daniel Atkinson is an educator, public programmer, and publisher. Originally from Minnesota, he is of mixed European settler and Mexican heritage. Atkinson is currently the Manager of Learning, Adult Interpretive Programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Co-Director, Education and Public Programs, of the Minneapolis-based Emerging Curators Institute. Atkinson has held several positions at several art institutions throughout the US, including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and at Dia:Beacon, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of the Moving Image across New York. He has degrees in Studio Arts (BA, U. of Minnesota), Art Education (MA, NYU), and Leadership in Museum Education (MS, Bank Street, NY).

Crystal Mowry

Crystal Mowry (she/her) is the Director of Programs at the MacKenzie Art Gallery. She previously held the position of Senior Curator at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery where she oversaw the gallery’s exhibitions, collections, and publishing activities for over a decade. As a curator operating primarily within the context of a public art museum, she treats her role as equal parts co-conspirator and translator, often seeking ways to support artists in the development of new projects. Her curatorial work includes group exhibitions such as I’ll be your Mirror, The Perennials, and What the Bat Knows. In 2013 she co-curated Romancing the Anthropocene, one of the three projects commissioned for the City of Toronto’s annual Nuit Blanche event. Her solo projects with artists Maggie Groat, Ernest Daetwyler, and Deanna Bowen have received Exhibition of the Year Awards from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries (now Galleries Ontario Galeries) and in 2020 she was a recipient of a Waterloo Region Arts Award. Mowry has written curatorial and experimental texts for artist-focused publications on the work of Brendan Fernandes, Shary Boyle, August Klintberg, Annie MacDonell, and others. She lives in Treaty 4 (Regina) with her family.

Nicole Neufeld (moderator)

Nicole Neufeld is the Community Engagement Coordinator at the Art Gallery of Guelph. Previously, she held positions at the River Run Centre, Guelph, as the Program Manager of Development and Marketing, the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery as the Director of Public Programs, Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto as Head of Membership and Development, the National Gallery of Canada as a Research Assistant, and Carleton University as an Independent Curator. She has a Master of Arts in Art History from Carleton University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Guelph, where her academic research focused on contemporary Canadian art, problematizing constructions of national identity through the lens of critical race theory. Current and past programs include Walking as Remapping series of artist led walks (2022), MusicWorks|StageWorks youth mentorship in performance (2019, 2021), coorganizing conferences such as Spectres of History (2022) and Complicated Entanglements: Rethinking Pluralism in the 21st century (2008), and sitting on the editorial committee for author/artist collective Publication Studio Guelph (2014 – 2018).

Sally Frater (moderator)

Sally Frater is the daughter of immigrants from the Caribbean. Curatorially she is interested in decolonial praxis, space and place, Black and Caribbean diasporas, photography, art of the everyday, and issues of equity and representation in museological spaces. She has curated solo and group exhibitions for institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Guelph, the Ulrich Museum of Art, Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto, Project Row Houses, and Centre[3] for Artistic and Social Practice. She is the senior curator/curatorial manager at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon, SK.

Julie Crooks

Julie Crooks is head curator of the department of the Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora at the Art Gallery of Ontario where she curated exhibitions including Fragments of Epic Memory (2021), Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires (2018) and Free. Black. North (2017). Prior to joining the AGO in 2017, Julie Crooks curated exhibitions for many organizations including BAND (Black Artists Networks in Dialogue) and the Royal Ontario Museum’s Of Africa project. She holds a PhD from the Department of History of Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and is an instructor in the Art History program at York University.

Dr. Kelli Morgan

Dr. Kelli Morgan is the recently appointed senior curator at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, MI. Over the last decade, her scholarly commitment to the investigation of anti-blackness within American art and visual culture has demonstrated how traditional art history and museum practice work specifically to uphold white supremacy. Besides her own curatorial experience, she mentors emerging curators and regularly trains staff at various museums to foster best practices in collection management, exhibitions, community engagement, and fundraising. She is a leading and influential voice in furthering museum practice and has previously held curatorial positions at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.