Rachael G. Seupersad
Public Art: What you need to know
October 11th @ 7 PM AKA Gallery Event Space
Rachael Seupersad will speak about the issues and ideas surrounding public art in general as a precursor to going into the details of applying on calls and how the process works.
Since 2008, Seupersad has led the Public Art program in the city of Calgary and is responsible for growing, managing and programming the City’s Public Art Collection. With a staff of eight and over $14,000,000 in active public art projects in 2011, Calgary’s is the largest Public Art program in Canada.
Since stepping into the Superintendent role Rachael has led a program and policy review process that resulted in a new amended policy in 2009 with unanimous support from Calgary City Council; a capital project to design and build a new state of the art storage facility for the City’s Civic Art Collection; a corporate-wide Public Art Strategic Platform that functions as a model for public art initiatives in the broader community; and several public programming activities that engage citizens and visitors alike with Calgary’s Public Art Collection.
Rachael also sits on the Board of Directors of the Alberta Museums Association and is actively engaged in contemporary dialogue and research on the changing role of museums in society. She is specifically interested in the notion of “public” as it pertains to the intersections between public art collections in museums and those stewarded by municipalities outside of museums and gallery spaces. Rachael has written about the learning that can be transferred between the disciplines of public art and museology. She believes that this information transfer and discourse regarding community investment and engagement is key to the development of sustainable practices in both fields.
