Conceptions of White: In Conversation with Lillian O’Brien Davis and John Hampton

Conceptions of White is an exhibition offering context and nuanced perspectives that help viewers grapple with contemporary configurations of White identity. The exhibition examines the origins, travel, and present reality of “Whiteness” as a concept and a racial invention that classifies degrees of civility/humanity.

The exhibition is framed through a biracial lens with both curators seeking a clearer understanding of their own relationship to Whiteness. John G. Hampton (Chickasaw/Canadian/American) is the Executive Director and CEO of the MacKenzie Art Gallery and Lillian O’Brien Davis (Jamaican/Canadian) is the Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programming at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography. The following conversation is a reflection between both curators on the exhibition after its presentation at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto in the winter of 2023, the midpoint of the exhibition’s national tour.

My collaboration with John began in earnest in 2019, at the beginning of my time at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, SK. At John’s invitation, I began contributing research to the project we continually referred to as “Whiteness.” Both John and myself had been orbiting around questions of Whiteness and White identity through our own independent research, and we came together to produce an exhibition that looks directly at the topic of White racial identity. 

Throughout the process of curating the exhibition, both John and myself experienced evolutions in our careers — John was hired as the first ever Indigenous Director and CEO of a major Canadian art institution at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in 2020, and in 2021 I was hired as the Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programs at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography in Toronto. Through these personal evolutions and the social and political upheavals that were gaining institutional attention, Conceptions of White evolved in its nature, actively responding to the conversations we as curators were engaging in with colleagues and friends. The following conversation is one of the only occasions where we’ve been able to debrief about our experiences, reflecting on our own curatorial collaboration and the public reaction to the exhibition.

-Lillian O’Brien Davis

JOHN HAMPTON [JH]: Where do you want to start?

LILLIAN O’BRIEN DAVIS [LOD]: I was thinking about asking you a question that someone posed to me on a tour around choosing to identify the artists’ racial position [in the exhibition]. I was intrigued by that question, and it occurred to me that maybe we did talk about it; it isn’t explicitly stated on the labels unless the artist explicitly states their own racial position, or unless it was relevant, in the case of Howardena [Pindell] for instance.

JH: So, you want to start from positioning [laughter]. That’s a good starting spot. Well, two good starting spots; 1. who’s speaking, who’s making the work, and 2. the question of speaking about Whiteness or centering Whiteness, and the tension within that. I do get asked that often, people that want to deconstruct Whiteness say: but by talking about it, am I centering Whiteness?

My off-hand response is: no, there is a difference between centering Whiteness and naming it. Because White people, or more broadly the system of White supremacy, hates the word White, hates it being pointed out. Centering Whiteness usually is also connected with it being invisible; it’s centered to that point where it’s not visible. So, that’s one aspect, but then 2. who’s speaking? Whose perspectives are being brought forward?

We did talk about it quite a bit, it was very early on — we decided it was important that we put our own racial positioning into the opening blurb because that’s an important part about how people will read the show, about who’s speaking. And for artists I think we agreed that it was important, but you know… we have agency and we can speak for ourselves very freely, but speaking on behalf of the artist and making choices about how they identify is something that we didn’t think was our role. The artists are making their bios intentionally and putting in the information that’s relevant. And I think we even gave a prompt to artists, in thinking through their bio about
what would be relevant. Do you remember talking about that?

LOD: I definitely recall having that initial conversation around the boundary of how we’re positioning the artist we’re working with.

JH: We thought that it would be very helpful to have that information, but it’s not our place to be making that decision on behalf of the artists. And it did get written where it was relevant, it was written into the labels where it was essential information, and then some of the artists choose within their bio. But having it right up at the top just felt uncomfortable, in not a productive way, maybe. That’s where we’d be reading a label and try to put a complicated racial identity into brackets next to their name. Like to have the title, the medium, and then race at the top — and that’s what we discussed, that’s maybe where it would go, because sometimes museums put in citizenship, and then we do put in Indigenous nations here at the MacKenzie [Art Gallery], in a lot of labels. But then for a show that’s trying to talk about the complexities and the intersections of these identities, that it seemed maybe a bit reductive to just write it in, as short as possible, up there next to their name — because there wasn’t a coherent approach we could take to that, that would work for everybody.

LOD: Yeah, it was a really tricky thing to find a solution for, and the solution being that the artist’s own bio leads the way. I think that for the most part, the artists don’t necessarily self-identify, except for Nicholas [Galanin] whose affiliations are listed as part of their bio, and then Barbara Meneley where it’s important to the context that she’s a White settler making this work — you need to know that information to understand the work.

JH: I think that that’s still a somewhat unresolved issue maybe. In the label for Arthur Jafa’s piece, for example: it’s very important for that work to know that it’s from his personal perspective as a Black man in America, about how Whiteness is being framed there. That’s how he speaks about it. We were reflecting on that in relation to the conversation with Nell Painter, who has a “right” to speak about other races and in what way? And I think that maybe everyone has a right to speak about Whiteness, because it impacts everybody. Everyone in Western society has a relationship to Whiteness. But it makes a difference what their positionality is.

LOD: Has this exhibition changed for you? Because this project has been something you’ve been thinking about for almost 10 years! [Laughter]

JH: Yeah, let’s both go into that maybe — about how it’s changed for us, and what it means individually. For me, my understanding of Whiteness has changed immensely from the start of this project. I try to only do exhibitions exploring areas that I want to learn about. I knew Whiteness was an area that was of interest to me, trying to understand my own relationship to Whiteness and to the Chickasaw Nation, where they say there’s no half citizens. Right? You’re Chickasaw or you’re not. But then also wanting to honor my mother, and not erase that part of me, and also the lived experience of growing up with a fair degree of White privilege. And so, thinking of ways to acknowledge that complexity, but also understand it myself. Over the course of the not-quite-ten years (I think it started eight years ago), through these conversations with the artists, through the research, through listening to podcasts and reading, it’s all really helped me expand my idea, my understanding, of Whiteness. And it changes how I think of myself, too, as a result, because it came from that very personal perspective.

Not all of that change, and not all the things that ignited that change, are visible in the exhibition. And they don’t need to be, because that’s a personal journey. The show is not about me or you, but about what the artists are saying, and how that connects to the visitors and the institution and yes, how that intersects with us. But there’s multiple significant life journeys that are attached to this that just don’t need to be illustrated. And I wonder if you feel that same way or something different in your movement, in thinking through Whiteness.

LOD: Yeah, I think I prepared this question for you and for Jeremy [Bailey] and Jennifer [Chan], initially, and then I’m like, oh, goodness, I’m more comfortable asking questions at this point. But I think for me this show has been a kind of learning journey and a growth journey. As a curator, getting to work with you and artists who are quite articulate and established in their research and their paths or artistic practices. So, as a more emerging curator, that was incredibly educational. And so, I think I’ve grown a lot in that sense. And then in terms of my relationship to Whiteness, I’m very interested in complexity, and when we connected I was doing my master’s thesis, and it was very much anchored around this idea of, ‘no answers,’ [laughter] and a preference for complexity, for lack of a different word. And so, in focusing on Whiteness for the last four or so years, for the most part I’ve gotten a better sense of how, in fact, it still remains a very complex identity category, which is almost comforting or something. [Laughter] As we frame in the tours that we do, or the talks that we do, there isn’t a solution or an answer that we were able to land on or even wanted to. I’ve learned a lot about a subject. And I think that it was a very important subject that I was circling around in all the other topics that I was interested in when I first began working on this project. And also, I’ve grown as a person who is able to ask questions and be a curator. I think it has really advanced how I think about working with artists, how I think about art in general, and also — maybe to call back to your conversation with Barbara Fischer and Anthony Kiendl [that I moderated this past winter] — how I think about relationships to institutions, and how Whiteness threads through those institutions, and also how I understand myself in relationship to that. I am pleased I’m able to curate this and there is some remove, even though we’re both articulating our relationship to ourselves a little bit. I feel a bit like a scientist or something. It’s not necessarily about my embodied experience, but that we’re pursuing a hypothesis.

JH: It makes sense about that change also being associated with just your curatorial practice. Through the later stages of this exhibition, when it was actually becoming a real show, I was at a point of being an emerging museum director. You were just out of your master’s program, and you’ve moved in your career quite a bit since the beginning of working on the show. We’re in those stages of our career, navigating predominantly White institutions, and how do we operate within them if the major research project that we’re working on at that time also has to do with Whiteness? Did you think about that? Or do those influence each other?

LOD: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I’m aware that Conceptions of White was definitely a big springboard. It helped people see me as a serious curator. So, I’m conscious of that. But I think within the project and the learning that happens through the research that we were doing, which is I think, more where your question lies — I think that I became a lot more astute in how I could relate to the organizations I was working with or connecting with, and that I was able to gain a better picture of a field or of a context when approaching an institution where I was working independently. And I think, hopefully, it’s made me a better curator and a better ally in some ways, in terms of my sensitivity to how I’m navigating institutions and creating trust with artists who I am navigating those institutions with.

I’ve also been conscious of your trust and openness to work together. I’m very much learning from you in this process, in addition to contributing to the project.

JH: Let’s talk about that idea of collaboration, which might not just be about Whiteness [laughter]. We don’t have to talk exclusively about Whiteness. When I was finishing my undergrad, I did a small publication for a show with my undergrad thesis advisor, Randall Rogers. We co-wrote that publication, and then he also had that shifting role as my advisor — because he was giving feedback on these ideas — and co-author. Which made sense because we were deep in those ideas together.

Over the course of this exhibition, there’s the early stage where it was those more practical aspects, when you started at the MacKenzie as the curatorial assistant and I didn’t then have the capacity to pursue this project. And it’s like, can you be the internal lead on it? But then, we were also already having conversations about these topics from before you started at the MacKenzie. So, we had some working relationship where we even talked about the concepts of the show while you were still doing your master’s, and then you got involved in some of the research too, right? So, doing additional research on artists, on materials. And then it moved into a ‘curating with’ relationship, because you were bringing a lot of new ideas and materials to the table. And then it shifted to a co-curation model, which takes some reflection to look at how relationships and collaborations shift over time. But for me, it shifted to co-curation when the nature of the show was at a stage where it just wouldn’t have been the same show without your input. I think, in the end, half of the artists were from your suggestions and research, and we were bringing all of that material together in a way that felt very collaborative. I think that there was still an aspect that, you know, I had more institutional experience or exhibitions under my belt, and there’s some practical knowledge and skills that came from that, but that’s not at the level of the actual ideas and concepts. It could not have existed or would not have been the same show. That came to be co-developed as you’re talking through things with somebody extensively over a period of time, then, there’s that shift where it’s not your own ideas at a certain stage; it becomes collective. So, I think that that was something I was thinking through over that time. And then of course, you know, the side of acknowledging it and vocalizing it, and how we were going to credit things, that also changes labour relations, navigating contracts, and you know, what’s within your scope of duties and what’s outside.

LOD: I think also the show would not have been the same without John [laughter]. Your relationship to research is something I’ve learned a lot from. You had done so much investigating prior to my introduction to the project that you shared with me, and then throughout this I’ve learned a lot from you and from this exhibition in terms of the depths that you can plumb [laughter] — is that the right expression? — into a topic and relationship to an art exhibition. I think my other projects have taken a very different approach, so that aspect of this show is pretty unique for me.

JH: Not everybody likes that approach to curating, plumbing those depths, but you were right in there, in the depths of the mine [laughter].

LOD: [Laughter] The mine?!

JH: Yeah, and that’s my favourite form of curatorial practice — I think that’s where curation shines. Coupled with the understanding that 98% of that research is not going to be visible. You don’t have to put everything out there to show that you’ve done it all, but through the end outcome hopefully all of that thought and feeling is informing the decision-making, it can be experienced in that more abstract, aesthetic idea. That’s my idealistic journey with how art functions: all of those complex ideas don’t need to be explicitly stated to be received. But also, I’m not a big fan of long-form writing [laughter]. I would love to have some output for all of that, but it just disappears, and we have conversations like these as ways to allow the ideas to continue to evolve, but not in a definitive way that’s closing the chapter of a book.

JH: And then that maybe connects to — because part of why I like that process and why I love art is that it gives those opportunities for different [people] to read the exhibitions and the works and the ideas in different ways, and for that to evolve, and connect to oral storytelling about how things shift and get perceived in new ways. I wonder if you’ve felt that individuality come out as we speak about the show, too. I guess neither of us have been there while the other is giving a tour independently — like, to hear how we’re each talking about the show, and framing it in different ways, and with our own voice. But I feel like that probably comes out in conversation, and when we’re alone with this show that was built from multiple collective voices, that then starts to be articulated through our own minds and voice. Have you felt that as you’re talking about the show, that there’s something about activating that unique voice that’s different?

LOD: I think working with someone who is more established as a curator, wanting to make sure that I can feel confident in my position and contribution, is also something we’ve chatted about offline. I’ve really been figuring out how I want to frame things, so that I feel comfortable responding to questions, talking from a position of — not authority but of confidence. I think when I do tours, something that I’ve learned from you is framing the tour and show in this broader lens and making that explicit: we’re not speaking to individuals; this is a wider-lensed approach. I try to bring in the collective voice, I’ll say: you know, John and I were really excited to have this person agree to contribute, or John and I spoke about this, and we really wanted to have a Saskatchewan voice. So, to continue that presence, which is maybe where that wanting to speak from a position of confidence, that this was something that we agreed on and thought about, and making that clear in terms of framing the exhibition. I really put the research forward. We have this research toolkit that was shared early on in the process because we wanted people to be able to access our reference materials, and the Whiteness timeline being another example of that, of something that will live on past the dates of the exhibition that people will ideally be able to activate on their own time as learning tools.

And also letting the artists speak — I often bring Nell [Painter] and Apollo Belvedere into conversation together, saying: John and I were really happy to have Nell’s work in the show because they converse with each other really well, and then Apollo takes us to Jennifer Chan’s work really seamlessly, thinking about facial typography. And then talking about Arthur Jafa’s work, I really think of that as the thesis of the show a little bit, it does a really great job of summing up so much of what we’re interested in.

JH: I’m also curious to see — because a lot of the work that we’re doing is finding that collective voice — I’m curious about your individual reading and perspective and how that can bring something a little bit different. A lot of the show, even thinking through this conversation right now and the reception of the work in the exhibition, is about how we spend time thinking about different audiences, and about how Indigenous audiences, other racialized audiences, will receive the work. And also about how White audiences will receive this. White audiences have a lot of work directed at them, but explicitly rather than the quieter implied White audience that permeates most Western cultural production. I’m thinking… well, for us to advance on issues of race and dialogues about race, I do think that there needs to be that ability to talk about Whiteness and have that critical reflection. A lot of this work for me has been trying to do it in a sensitive way, because my own relationship to Whiteness comes into account. I suggest: here’s how I’m trying to navigate and come to terms with these things in my own relationship to it and how I bring the self-reflection in a way that’s hopefully productive rather than debilitating. I realize that a lot of how I deliver tours and talk about the shows — especially when I can see an audience and look at them — is framed through those motivations, about how I can make this relevant to the people here in this audience in a way that they can receive it.

You know, I’m talking as though it’s being framed for those people, but I think that that’s my own perspective. That influences how I talk about the show because of that value system or that strategy with how to engage with other people. But then I talk to other folks that are doing a similar type of work — anti-racist work, Indigenization work — that is much more confrontational in style, which is more effective for them. Those people would lead a tour of this exhibition in such a different way. So, I’m curious about how you feel about what type of voice you want to adopt, or do adopt — I don’t know if those are the same things in speaking about this work.

LOD: Ideally they would be the same, but I don’t think they are [laughter]. As you were speaking, I was thinking about that question you brought up earlier around centering Whiteness, and usually Whiteness is being centered in the sense of centering White people’s comfort. Or a desire, from wherever, to ensure that they’re not being challenged or that their position is safe, so that despite whatever is happening in the gallery or in whatever conversation, there is never any existential threat. It’s interesting, I think this about the work that we did, but also hearing feedback from folks, the show itself doesn’t really pull any punches, you know, it deals with tough material and it doesn’t flinch, which I think was the goal: to look directly at Whiteness and White identity. And so, it’s very gratifying to hear that feedback. And to your point about people choosing to be more direct or confrontational in their approach, we are absolutely doing that through our work. I’m trying to give people access to the show, and I’m aware of the difficult nature of the exhibition, but also because I’m deeply connected to this show and want people to fully embrace it as we have. So, I want to find a way to bring in as many people into this conversation as possible. For me, the approach that I found most effective is that style that I was describing to you in terms of doing tours.

In terms of how I am versus how I aspire to be, and my communication style, I’m absolutely trying to learn as a communicator and a curator to speak from a position that is a little bit more direct, and to learn to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations, or at least to feel some amount of stability in myself when I’m confronted with someone or something that is resistant to what I have to say. That is also what part of my learning from this exhibition is — I described doing a show about Whiteness in 2020 as like giving birth in a burning house [laughter] and that was maybe a little dramatic, and it was after a long day — but you’re really learning on the fly in terms of this very urgent topic. We’re trying our best to tackle it from a holistic perspective and with a lot of generosity, and also, I would argue, a sense of humour. There is humour in the show, there’s been funny moments that we’ve experienced, so I like keeping that in mind too.

JH: Yeah, it’s a good analogy; I think we were giving birth in a burning house. It’s an urgent topic that needs to be addressed, and there is a forward-looking aspect of that, too. How do we continue life when we’re at a state where it’s too far gone for us to just… for the dynamics created through Whiteness, like… the toothpaste isn’t going back in the tube, you know?

LOD: Yes, maybe that’s a less graphic analogy [laughter]. The toothpaste is out of the tube.

JH: [Laughter] Yeah, so, we’re living with that. We’ve got something that’s an important thing for audience members to know: when we talk about race as an invention, it doesn’t mean that it’s not real. Which is something a lot of people have seen, in anti-racist work, that there isn’t enough education happening on that matter. That may be speaking to change in the landscape since the beginning of the show to when it came out in 2022 and even now today. The show would have been, I think, a lot more controversial pre-2020. A lot of that education work that would’ve had to have been done in the exhibition is being done out in the community. So, being attuned to what are our audiences — what a fair assumption of public discourse is on that. We were saying Whiteness was invented for a specific purpose, but now it exists, and it functions, and it replicates itself, it has a life of its own, it continues to evolve and change. But it’s very much a real thing; that house is on fire and we’ve got to go on with that task of continuing to live life.

LOD: Yeah, and maybe, to lean into my questionable metaphor a bit more, fire is also a release, like, to burn something is to release it. It’s generative, hopefully.

JH: Depending on what house is on fire… [laughter] maybe that metaphor will change, whether it’s the house that Whiteness built that’s on fire, or it’s the space that gives you comfort and security. I don’t know; maybe those are the same things for some people.

LOD: I think if the house is the world as we understand it, or the world as we’re made to relate to it now, and our relationships to institutions and to one another are changing very rapidly, at least on the ground level. Those confines are very much up in the air. To bring it back to the show, and Howardena Pindell’s work, what spoke to me so much about that was that the work was made in the 1980s, but she was coming of age during the first civil rights movement in the United States, that led to the Civil Rights Act, which is on our timeline. And to see a Black woman of that era using language and speaking to experiences that are so relevant forty-plus years later…

JH: The change sometimes feels very slow, and sometimes very quick.

LOD: Yeah, it’s both incredibly urgent, but also this has been simmering for a really long time.

JH: Yeah, that’s something that Mabel [The Greek Slave by Hiram Powers] really helps with — it’s become really important in me talking about the show, especially with people in the art world about this misconception that: oh, all of a sudden, everything is about race, or like, art now all has to be about race. It’s a dismissive reading of contemporary dialogues around race and race relations. But Mabel is such a helpful tool in saying: no, art and national identity in Canada and the United States has always been a racial proposition, and has been a space for navigating and coming to this new form of identity and configuring and understanding the world. And that was part of the intent. This isn’t new, we’re just dealing with that legacy, and that’s always been the case — at least across the United States and Canada.

These are issues that have been urgent and impacting people’s lives as long as the Americas have been colonized, at least. Maybe what people are responding to all of a sudden, why this is happening now, is because there is a change, and one of the many inflection points of pushing back on this North American proposition of Whiteness as the ideal state to organize around. How we’re discussing or voicing that opposition is in a new stage, I think. If you could borrow from Truth and Reconciliation language, the exhibition is in some ways at a ‘truth stage,’ of us just trying to actually be able to name and have that conversation. We are hopefully moving on from stages of talking about Whiteness’ impact on non-White folks, on the complete inability to recognize there is an impact. We’re now at a stage of trying to ask, what is Whiteness? This is a real thing, an invention, and a discourse, and I’ve heard some people give some feedback around work in the show, that these works deal with that ‘truth’ aspect, and they say: ok well, I want to be done with that; instead I just want to see the next stage: what other types of models or voices or structures can we lift up? So, there is a hunger and desire for what the next stage is. I still think we’re fully embedded in this truth aspect of just needing to recognize and just be honest about the system and position that we’re in.

LOD: Yeah. Sounds like your friends are much more radical than
my friends [laughter]. Everyone I’ve spoken to is like: wow, I haven’t
thought about it this way before! And your friends are like: what’s
next, let’s go… [Laughter]

Maybe there is a natural segue between what we were talking about and some other questions that we didn’t really get to yet, around the show being originally presented in Regina. It had its genesis in the Prairies, and then also you were able to be in Regina for the duration of the show there, and then I’ve been able to be here in Toronto for this version of the show — I’m curious if there are any notable differences in audience reaction that we’ve been privy to. Of course we don’t have access totally to that information.

JH: I have more access to the Regina audiences, and I think the expectation that people would have is that — oh, the Toronto audience is going to be so much more understanding or sophisticated in terms of racial dialogues. I haven’t seen that, and it wouldn’t be my expectation. Also, it’s just like, the discourse is a little bit different. I don’t have a good answer for that.

LOD: I feel like that’s fine, too. I think I was more earnestly anxious when the show opened in Regina, but I think that’s also because it was the first time it was going to open, so there’s other nerves associated with that. Overall, I’ve been pretty surprised that there isn’t an even more strong reaction. To your earlier point, a lot of educational work is already being done on social media and through other channels, in terms of people’s familiarity with this subject matter, so maybe we are seeing those effects. So people are coming into the show and they are a little bit more comfortable with this topic than they might have been a couple years ago, and therefore are able to have a bit more capacity to engage.

JH: I think the bigger difference might come from the University
of Toronto audience versus a general Regina public audience, that

there’s just as engrained opinions in both publics, and it’ll be in-
teresting to see in a Vancouver public audience, comparing public

with public in that way. I expected maybe a little bit more progres-
sive critiques from the Toronto audience. People not necessarily

disagreeing with the subject matter but the approach. That was my expectation. And in Regina, I’ve gotten access to more of the feedback. I’ve gotten that feedback from individual visitors. My favorite response was that one older White man who said to the front desk: I walked into the gallery one way, and I walked out as a changed person. That’s a beautiful, aspirational impact there that you can’t always have, and so, I do think that here in Regina, you’re having more of an impact on people as individuals based off of the material that’s here. A lot of the artworks will be new, because — you know, there was a Deanna Bowen exhibition in Toronto, some of the other work has been seen in Toronto, so this is a fresh framing. While in Toronto, I think its impact is in that university context, one of the major universities in Canada. It’s more of a research and discourse impact, because it has that opportunity to go into classrooms. A number of people I’ve talked to, it’s in their curriculum, so that is going to be replicated through research and discourse and academia, while the other one here in Regina has a more community-based and relational impact.

LOD: Are there any threads you wish we’d pulled out more?

JH: Global perspectives — you know, we talked about the immense amount of research that went into this, and everything that couldn’t be in the show, and we did really have to focus on Whiteness in the U.S. and Canadian context, the art historical impacts, and where it’s going, which is still a very broad topic. But there are so many more individual aspects that you can focus on, things that weren’t included. That’s why I mentioned, when we were sending some materials back and forth about the casta painting traditions in Mexico, which would just open up too many doors for the scope of this show. And other global perspectives we’ve gotten questions about: have you looked at Whiteness in Britain, in India, in Russia?… So, I think the things I feel bad about not including in the show is just because it’s not the scope, and I’m excited for those to be explored by somebody else.

LOD: The show is unusual in my experience because we had quite a long time to think, compared to other exhibitions that we’ve worked on separately and together, to do the research. And not totally by design but because COVID came in and pushed our timelines a bit longer. And in terms of the things that ended up in the show, we really contemplated them for quite a while, so it feels like a very well-steeped tea or something [laughter]. So, adding things would be a very fundamental shift at this point.

JH: There is so much we didn’t see, and couldn’t, as well. Glad we’re still in it; there’s going to be another stop on the tour, so we continue to work with this. Yeah, the length of the show, you can’t always do that, the nature of programming exhibitions, so it’s interesting having those long-term projects that live with you the rest of your life, I think. Even though I’m still young…

LOD: Oh, I was just going to say, I’m looking forward to the next iteration in Vancouver, and it occurred to me — because so much of my career has involved this show and also working with you — that there’s going to be a moment when we’re done working together on this. I think it will be very melancholy, because I very much appreciate being able to chat and send you quick messages that are related to the show, but sometimes not. So, I was like: oh, there will be an end to this chapter…

JH: Yes, it’ll be a new stage I guess at that point. And then this one I keep saying is my last exhibition ever, so we’ll see if I stick with that. As Executive Director, I’m not able to engage with curatorial practice in the same way.

So, we’ll see. For you and I both, it will be a new chapter after the Vancouver show. But I’m excited about the Vancouver Art Gallery presentation, I guess it’ll be its biggest platform in terms of audience members, so some of the questions we left unanswered on that front will be realized soon, I guess.

LOD: Yeah, stay tuned.

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John G. Hampton (they/them) is a curator, artist, administrator, and the current Executive Director and CEO of the MacKenzie Art Gallery. They hold a Master’s of Visual Studies in Curatorial Studies from the University of Toronto, and a BA in Visual Arts from the University of Regina. John is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, the United States, and Canada, and grew up in Regina. They have previously held positions as Executive Director of the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, Artistic Director of Trinity Square Video, Curator-in-Residence at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and Curator at Neutral Ground Artist-Run Centre.

Lillian O’Brien Davis (she/her) is a curator and writer based in Toronto, ON. She holds a Masters of Visual Studies in Curatorial Studies and a BA Hons. with Distinction in the History of Art and English Literature from the University of Toronto. Lillian is currently the curator of Nuit Blanche Etobicoke 2023 and the former Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programs at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography. She has curated independent projects at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Susan Hobbs Gallery (Toronto), School of Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba and the MacKenzie Art Gallery (Regina). Her writing has appeared in BlackFlash, Canadian Art, C Magazine, Insight, and RACAR. She is also currently one of two inaugural Visiting Curators at the University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery.

This article is published in issue 40.1 of BlackFlash magazine. Get this issue