Critical Distance PROGRAMMING Study Hall

INTRODUCING OUR WINTER/SPRING 2025 PROGRAM
Welcome to STUDY HALL

One key finding from our New Directions survey is that curators — whether locally based, a recent arrival, or even just visiting — need space. That is, welcoming, communal, and curatorially-focused space in which to study, to gather, to connect, to experiment, to learn, consolidate, and recuperate.

In response to this finding, Critical Distance is pleased to introduce Study Hall, our newest initiative. This Winter, we open our doors and our program to exploring and experimenting with more nimble, flexible, responsive, and mutually supportive frameworks for curatorial commoning and collaboration.

As much a process as a program, Study Hall will serve as dedicated space and time to not only continue the conversations we started under our New Directions mandate, but also to invite an ever-widening network of curators to come forward and contribute their diverse voices and perspectives to these and other critical conversations we are having in relation to curating today. Through individual, interpersonal, and collective/group study, we will seek to foster more intentional, relational, and reciprocal opportunities for curatorial experimentation, co-learning, and co-presentation across divides of all kinds.

In a city where scarcity has become status quo even as an ever-accelerating excess of social posts, programs, pronouncements, and prescriptions drives so many in the arts to distraction and even disconnection, Critical Distance will prioritize slower, deeper, and more durational forms of critical reflection, reconnection, and collaborative production in both real time and expanded space. This doesn’t mean there will be nothing to see or experience in Suite 122. On the contrary, as we begin to roll out our new offerings in the form of ideas, inquiries, propositions, opportunities, events, and other initiatives, the Study Hall program will unfold in both organic/impromptu and iterative/ever-evolving fashion — and we invite curators (and artist-curators, and arts workers, and the curatorially-curious from our wider communities) everywhere to reach out and join in its ongoing co-creation. Stay tuned for details on the various ways you can get involved soon.

Study Hall soft launches Friday, February 14, 2025 starting at 2pm. Drop in anytime until 6pm to chat with our Director, peruse our featured publications, add your input to our New Directions survey (now open to all), and find out more. There will be tea.

Thereafter Study Hall will be in session Thursdays through Saturdays, 12-6 pm and by appointment. Subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on Instagram for updates as they happen, and as always, thank you for your interest and support.

Some things you can do here during our Study Hall:

• Preview our Curatorial Library and Archive and peruse the Featured Publications on our library tables
• Browse and buy books, magazines, and multiples from our Shop
• Fill out our Survey to shape our next decade and learn how you can 
  get more involved!
• Add your notes to our Question/Request boards — we will respond!
• Introduce yourself / ask questions / join the conversation on 
  what curating is / does / can do / means to you
• Subscribe to our newsletter to hear about upcoming events, including curators’ talks and tours, book launches, workshops, exhibitions, incubators, and more
• Get comfortable! You are welcome to use the tables and soft seating area for reading, quiet co-working, and conversation.

Critical Distance acknowledges operating support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.