Saturday, November 13 | 10 am – 12 pm

“We write about art in order to clarify and to account for our responses to works that interest or excite or frustrate us.” —Sylvain Barnet, A Short Introduction to Writing About Art

This workshop will be a short introduction to arts writing, specifically strategies and approaches to reviewing art exhibitions and profiling individual works of art using Conversations: The Windsor Essex Triennial of Contemporary Art 2021 as the subject.

Curator and arts writer Ray Cronin will lead this workshop, which will be in four parts: 

1. An introductory session on arts writing, discussing the process of clarifying and accounting for our “responses to works that interest or excite or frustrate us.”
2. A tour of the exhibition Conversations: The Windsor Essex Triennial of Contemporary Art 2021 after which participants will select a work to write about.
3. A Q&A with Ray Cronin after which the participants will prepare a draft of the piece they will write. Each participant will discuss their proposed piece with Cronin before the end of the workshop.
4. Those participants who wish to work their piece up into a finished draft will be able to submit it to Cronin for editorial suggestion.Finished pieces that meet AGW publication standards may be published on the AGW website (with the permission of the authors).

To Participate:

• While this workshop is intended as an introduction, participants at all levels of experience can be accompanied, from aspiring writers to professionals.
• Spots limited, pre-registration required. To reserve your spot, please email Sophie Hinch, Education and Public Programs Coordinator at shinch@agw.ca before November 12, 2021.
• Masks must be worn at all times in the gallery and safety guidelines must be followed.
• Participants are encouraged to bring a notebook, pen, tablet, or laptop.

About the workshop leader: Ray Cronin

Ray Cronin is a writer and curator who lives in Nova Scotia. He is the author of eleven books on Canadian art, has contributed over sixty essays to exhibition catalogues, and has been publishing essays and art reviews in Canadian and American magazines and newspapers for over thirty years. He is the editor-in-chief of the online art magazine Billie: Visual Culture Atlantic.

He has curated exhibitions for numerous art galleries, and was Curator of Contemporary Art and Director/CEO of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax. He is a graduate of the University of Windsor (MFA) and began his career in the arts as Program Coordinator at Artcite Inc. With Lucas Cabral, he is the curator of Conversations: The Windsor Essex Triennial of Contemporary Art 2021.

Czarina Mendoza, “range, power, capacity,” 2021, bamboo, cellophane, polypropylene rope, plastic straw rope, plastic stool

November 13, 2021 @ 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Art Gallery of Windsor

401 Riverside Dr W
Windsor, ON N9A 7J1 Canada