Building on the knowledge of accessible curatorial practices, documented in BIT’s Vital Practices in the Arts, the exhibition’s curators intentionally created a space that was welcoming, invitational, and hospitable to aging people as anticipated and desired artists and audience members. The curators developed these practices through their analysis of how disabled and aging people have been relegated to certain social institutions, such as asylums and hospitals, and kept out of others, such as art galleries, theatres, and museums. Working with the MSVU Gallery and bringing the exhibiting artists into this process, curators hung the artworks at an accessible height, ensured there was enough space between the works so that a mobility device user could comfortably navigate the space, provided ample and comfortable setting, created an audio description of each work, captioned videos, wrote the object labels (which feature information including titles, artists’ names, and materials used) and didactic texts (which are interpretive texts about an artwork or exhibition created by curators) in clear, jargon-free language, indicated tactile work and work that could be interacted with, and worked with ASL interpretation at all public-facing events.

The curators further adapted and expanded these vital practices to accommodate aging artists and audiences. For example, events featured live captioning in addition to ASL interpretation in recognition that people who have become deaf or hard of hearing through the aging process may not have learned a signed language. Curator Ingrid Jenkner approached the artists early on in their creative process to ask them to think about the different ways that bodies and art interact, and to imagine creative possibilities to make these interactions accessible. In response to this call, printmaker Cecil Day, who recently changed her practice from lithography to linocuts because the process of carving reliefs into the latter was less physically demanding, made one of her prints available as a tactile component for the exhibition. Nonvisual (and visual) audiences could touch Day’s prints to gain an intimate experience of her work that was not rooted in sight, nor reliant on the translation of a sighted person. This accessibility feature, made possible because of Day’s practice shifting with her process of aging, was a delightful surprise to the curators, who hadn’t encountered this enactment of access before. You can read MSVU Art Gallery Director Ingrid Jenker’s overview of the exhibition’s accessibility features in the digital catalogue.

The Age and Creativity Artists and Their Work

The Age and Creativity exhibition featured seven artists from the Atlantic region: Michael Fernandes, Cecil Day, a collaboration between Anna Torma and Illona Klocza, MJ Sakurai, Karen Langlois, George Steeves, and Onni Nordman, all professional artists identified as “older adults” and whose practices engaged, in some way, with the topic of aging.

As Chandler (2017) wrote in her Curatorial Statement on the exhibit, “Together, these works challenged assumptions about aging and explored the lived experience of aging as it relates to identity, culture, embodiment, sexuality and disability.” 

The Nova Scotia Centre on Aging hosted a multi-perspective panel on October 30, 2017 at Mount Saint Vincent University’s Art Gallery. Panelists offered insights into how art and art exhibitions can support public awareness of the social and cultural contributions that older adults make to our communities. The Panel was moderated by Dr. Janice Keefe, Director of the Nova Scotia Centre on Aging.

Panelists included:

• Michael Fernandes, artist
• Bill VanGorder, Canadian Association of Retired Persons
• Dr. Ardra Cole, Mount Saint Vincent University Centre for Arts Informed Research & Teaching
• Marcel McKeough, Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture & Heritage