The Bader Collection and Agnes Reimagined
In the spring of 2024 the Agnes Etherington Art Centre closed its doors to accommodate a new building project under the header of Agnes Reimagined (to open in 2026). This, as Agnes Director and Curator Emelie Chhangur describes it, “is a long-term social practice project, with architecture as its medium and the curatorial as its methodology … a proposition from which new museological practices emerge.” Within this methodological framework, temporary exhibitions will remain the preferred vehicle for engagement with our permanent collections, but both curatorially and spatially our approach will change. The European art collection, including our renowned Bader Collection, will no longer be tied to one dedicated gallery, but will instead be presented in varying exhibition spaces to suit the changing needs of different exhibition concepts. Supported by expanded galleries, as well as increased room for community programming and artistic residencies, the new facility will also offer more opportunities to activate collections through transhistoric and cross-cultural conversations. Let’s imagine for a moment what this may look like.

Suzanne van de Meerendonk

Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston
Suzanne van de Meerendonk is the Bader Curator of European Art at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University. She received her MA from the University of Amsterdam and her PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara. At Agnes, Suzanne has curated the exhibitions Studies in Solitude: The Art of Depicting Seclusion (2021-2022) and The Fabrics of Representation (2022), among other exhibitions. She previously worked at the Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University, The Art, Design & Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Her curatorial interests focus on intersectional and transhistorical approaches to the presentation of historical European art.