Our Mission

The Southern Alberta Art Gallery | Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin fosters the work of contemporary artists who challenge boundaries, encourages broad public engagement and promotes awareness and exploration of artistic expression. Our work extends to local, national, and international communities.

About Us

The Southern Alberta Art Gallery | Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin is uniquely situated as a contemporary art gallery connecting to both urban and rural communities in Southern Alberta, for over forty years. The Gallery grew out of a grass-roots movement, opening in 1976 with exhibition programming of a caliber found in much larger Canadian centres. The Gallery has presented innovative exhibitions, public engagement programming for all ages and diverse community groups, and transitory art programs in the public domain.

With a focus on artistic excellence, the Gallery has provided exhibition programming that is relevant to an international discourse on contemporary art, while also creating connections to our local visitors, building upon an incredible local vernacular for contemporary art and culture. Our significant programming is indicative of the platform extended to artists: we support their aspirations for risk-taking, experimentation, and connection to a community that is truly interested and invested in their practice.

The Gallery’s dedicated staff works collaboratively to support the visions of artists, and creating connections to their work with the communities we serve. The Gallery is a truly community-supported centre for contemporary art: local artists, families, neighbourhood businesses support our programming with donations and by connecting to all of our activities.

Many notable Canadian artists presented exhibitions at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery at key moments in their practice, and many produced their first publications that aided them in launching their careers. Faye HeavyShield’s exhibition Blood, in 2005 was curated by Paul Chaat Smith, then associate curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, and included a publication that was widely disseminated, bringing HeavyShield’s practice to a broader awareness. Significantly, the gallery’s Millennium project PLACE, a book with photographs of this area by Geoffrey James and text by Governor General Award-winning author Rudy Wiebe was nominated for the 2004 Roloff Beny Award. In 2011 the Gallery mounted the exhibition Emotional Blackmail with guest curators Marcús Tór Andrésson (Reykjavik) and Chen Tamir (Toronto, Tel-Aviv, New York). This exhibition included a performance by Ragnar Kjartansson, Iceland’s official representative to the 2009 Venice Biennale; Canadian duoHadley+Maxwell; Cypriot artist Christodoulos Panayiotou; Meiro Koizumi from Japan and many others. Morerecently, a co-production by Althea Thauberger, Mad Mad Mad Mad Filmy World, was exhibited at the Gallery in2018 and will be presented at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, and the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver in the next year.

Half of our gallery is situated within the historic Carnegie library, linking our programming to generative ideas of publications and progressive ways to share knowledge. The Gallery's long-standing and intense publishing program continues to thrive to this day. As an institution geographically proximal to the larger arena of contemporary art, publications are an opportunity to connect our artists and exhibitions with important writers, critics, and curators from Canada and abroad. Recent publications include Lavender Glass, with Zin Taylor and Dieter Roelstraete, co-published with Mousse, and Jennifer Rose Sciarrino’s Ruffled Follicles and a Tangled Tongue, with an essay by Julia Paoli.

Working within our vibrant cultural community, the Gallery actively enacts its mandate to foster the work of contemporary artists who challenge boundaries, encourage broad public engagement and promote awareness and exploration of artistic expression. The Gallery’s work extends to the local, national and international communities.