2 minute read
WHY I DO IT
Peter Dykhuis is fascinated with sparking cultural conversations not just within the four walls of the Dalhousie Art Gallery but campus wide, by tapping into the diverse creative and intellectual practices of all disciplines.
His Backstory: Peter Dykhuis has been the director and curator of the Dalhousie Art Gallery (DAG) since 2007. Prior to this, he was the director of the Anna Leonowens Gallery at NSCAD University. Dykhuis is also an internationally exhibiting visual artist and critical writer.
HIGHLIGHTS: The pandemic has presented obstacles to all gallery spaces and the DAG’s closure for construction on the updated Arts Centre presented an additional challenge that might have thwarted any other director’s plans. But Dykhuis has leveraged his tendency for divergent thinking into programming that works with challenges rather than against them. Case in point: conversations with Lukas Pearse, artistic director of Upstream Music; Tim Crofts, composer and lecturer at the Fountain School of Performing Arts; and Simon Docking, pianist and director of the Scotia Festival of Music, in which Dykhuis mentioned the gallery was housing the music department’s grand pianos during their renovation. The resulting performances of Herd of Pianos, featuring between six and seven of the grand pianos at any given time, was possible because Dykhuis and others recognized the potential for a creative moment. “Getting the right people in the room and making it happen, that’s my job right now,” Dykhuis says.
Why I Do It: For the past 14 years, Dykhuis has headed up the Dalhousie Art Gallery and says working for a gallery within the university context is “wonderfully complicated” because art can and does happen all over campus. “I’m interested in university art galleries as places where you don’t have to stick to the prescription. You can follow your curiosity, and that’s what we do in universities. We do labs. We try things out. We ask critical questions.” He emphasizes how important it is to stop thinking of fine art only in terms of European Western traditions and instead to consider how it relates to Mi’kmaq culture or to scientific investigation, for example. “It’s really fascinating to be in a full-spectrum university where you can look at how, say, health issues tie into visual culture. And I’m always looking for people that are game, that want to go places other galleries may not,” Dykhuis says. “Working as a curator is about the politics of display: how do you bring visual cultural material into a public dialogue? That’s basically what fuels me, and university art galleries are the best place to play around with ideas, because people are curious.” —AnnMarie MacKinnon
