Visionary Speaker Series: Emelie Chhangur

Visionary Speaker Series: Emelie Chhangur

From Kitchen Tables to Airport Terminals; Curating Civic Infrastructure

Wednesday, 7 October
7:00 p.m.
Free | please register

This talk considers what becomes possible when curatorial practice works directly on the structures through which cultural and public life are organized.

Drawing on twenty-five years of work, Chhangur follows two connected movements in her practice: changing cultural institutions from within and bringing curatorial practice into the public spaces and systems of the city.

At Agnes Reimagined, these movements came together. The museum itself became a long-term curatorial project, with architecture as a medium for rebuilding museum practice from the ground up and transforming its social and civic role.

Chhangur now brings this practice to the reimagining of Toronto Pearson International Airport as Art and Culture Integration Lead on the architectural design team. If Agnes reimagined the museum as civic infrastructure, Pearson reverses and expands that proposition: civic infrastructure is reimagined as culture.

Biography:

Emelie Chhangur is an award-winning artist, curator, writer, and institution-builder whose work has redefined relationships between contemporary art, public institutions and civic life. Her curatorial practice spans exhibitions, commissions, publications, public art, institutional transformation, museum architecture and civic infrastructure. She has curated more than 150 exhibitions and special projects, commissioned complex artworks across media and produced over 25 publications.

At the Art Gallery of York University (2003-2020), Chhangur transformed AGYU into a civic, community-facing institution, founded its artist residency program and developed in-reach—a methodology for changing institutional culture, systems, values, protocols and resource allocation from within.

As Director and Curator of Agnes Etherington Art Centre (2020-2026), Chhangur led Agnes Reimagined, a $108-million, six-year architectural and institutional transformation. She secured unprecedented public and philanthropic investment, expanded the museum’s curatorial capacity and brought Indigenous self-determination, artistic experimentation, collections, hospitality and public participation together in what she calls “a living museum.” Its two-year community-engaged design process, modelled on Anishinaabe talking circles, changed museum-making practice in Canada.

Chhangur lectures and publishes internationally on curatorial practice, institutional change and cultural infrastructure. Her more than 30 honours include the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence and the inaugural GOG BIPOC Changemaker Award. In 2025 she was one of the artists-in-residence at Fogo Island Arts. Chhangur holds an MVS from the Daniels Faculty of Landscape, Architecture and Design, University of Toronto.

Chhangur is currently the Art and Culture Integration Lead for NORR–DIALOGUE, the joint-venture architectural practice reimagining Toronto Pearson International Airport.

Sponsored by:

Photo courtesy of the speaker.