Free
About the discussion
Having joined the MMFA a year ago, Léuli Eshrāghi is responsible for upholding Indigenous arts protocols and fostering community engagement as well as for curating the Museum’s Indigenous arts exhibitions and collections. In conversation with Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Chief Curator of the MMFA, they will discuss their previous and ongoing projects and present the Museum’s most recent acquisitions of Indigenous art, including works by Walter Kaheró:ton Scott (Kanien’kehá:ka), Renée Condo (Mi’kmaq), Marie Watt (Onödowáʼga:) and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun (Quw’utsun and Syilx). Eshrāghi will also lay out their vision for collecting art and answering public interest with a view to encouraging conversation around the artworks.
About the speakers
Curator of Indigenous Arts at the MMFA since 2023, Léuli Eshrāghi, born in 1986 in Yuwi Country, belongs to the Seumanutafa and Tautua clans of the Sāmoan archipelago. Eshrāghi was the curator of TarraWarra Biennial 2023 (Highly Commended at the 2023 Victorian Museums and Galleries Awards), Curatorial Researcher at Large at the University of Queensland Art Museum, where they co-curated Oceanic Thinking: Season Two (2022), Mare Amoris | Sea of Love (2023-2024) and How We Remember Tomorrow (2024). Eshrāghi has also been a contributing writer and editor to numerous publications. Their essay Bambae ol stamba fasin blong lukaotem mo kasem ol wanwan saed blong solwora i no save lusum (Highly Commended at the AAANZ 2023 Arts Writing and Publishing Awards) was conceived for the monograph Daniel Boyd: Treasure Island. They have curated and contributed to various exhibitions, juries, residencies and gatherings in contemporary art centres and art museums in Canada, France, Australia, Hawaiʻi and Aotearoa New Zealand.
Chief Curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts since 2020, Mary-Dailey Desmarais oversees a multidisciplinary team dedicated to enriching, promulgating and preserving a collection of close to 47,000 art works and objects dating from antiquity to the present. Since joining the Museum in 2014, she has notably curated the exhibitions Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music (2022), How Long Does It Take for One Voice to Reach Another (2021), Adam Pendleton: These Things We’ve Done Together (2021) and Once Upon a Time... The Western: A New Frontier in Art and Film (2017), whose accompanying catalogue won two awards. She has published widely in scholarly journals, exhibition catalogues and art magazines on subjects ranging from Impressionism to global modern and contemporary art. Originally from New York, she holds a PhD in Art History from Yale, an MA from Williams College and a BA from Stanford.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Event location: Maxwell Cummings Auditorium, 1379-A, Sherbrooke Street West
Please note that unclaimed reserved seats will be made available to other participants.
