An innovative project of the Virtual Museum of Canada that uses social media and open source software to allow students to experience the work of a museum professional and to communicate with each other about the project.
The young curators – Canadian students in grades 10 to 12 (ages 16 to 18) from area high schools – experienced behind-the-scenes visits to the partner museums and galleries and met with personnel to learn more about the museum profession. The partners are: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Musée d’art de Joliette, Museum London, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Kamloops Art Gallery, and Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN).
On the theme “The Living City: inclusive, sustainable, creative” – the same theme for the Canadian Pavilion at the 2010 International Exposition in Shanghai – and working with their own local museum or gallery, students chose one or more artworks and researched and wrote a curatorial record for that object. Using social media, the young curators added their work to the project site in the Experimental Lab of the Virtual Museum of Canada.
Inspired by the original art in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia permanent collection, this exhibition shows some of the works chosen by Nova Scotia students together with the essays they wrote.
