Cultivating Sustainable Collections – Panelists and workshop organizers
Imogen Clendinning (she/her/they/them)
Imogen Clendinning is a settler media artist and scholar who resides in the traditional lands of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Attawandaron (or so-called London, Ontario). In their research, Clendinning develops DIY solar-powered web servers to hold digital archives and Internet Art. Recent projects include the Archive on Ice exhibited as part of Ice Follies Festival (Nbissing Region, 2021) and Archivetemporal, a solar-powered archive which comprises one facet of the Centre for Sustainable Curating and Synthetic Collective’s Objects as Temporal Entities project (2025-present). Her writing has been published by BlackFlash, Off Centre and tba Journal of Art, Media and Visual Culture. Clendinning is a SSHRC-funded scholar currently pursuing a PhD in Art and Visual Culture, Western University, with a focus on critical infrastructure studies and sustainable practices in digital archiving.
Jessica Cooley (she/her)
Jessica A. Cooley, PhD (she/her), has two decades of experience as a curator and scholar of disability art. Her work examines the methodologies that shape how disability art is defined, exhibited, and interpreted. Cooley is currently the Postdoctoral Curatorial and Teaching Fellow at the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University.
Sebastian De Line (they/them)
Sebastian De Line is an Associate Curator at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and Adjunct Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. His research focuses on a critique of racial capitalist values and economies that transform agential Indigenous, Black, and Asian human and beyond-human ancestors into labouring “objects” of extraction, accumulation and consumption determined by acquisition criteria within museum collections. Publications include the Journal of Visual Culture, C Magazine, and Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas.
Jean Dendy (she/her)
Jean Dendy is a Conservator of Cultural Heritage Materials with over 20 years of expertise in the conservation of organic materials. Holding a Master of Art Conservation from Queen’s University, Jean bridges the gap between material practice and scientific analysis. Throughout her career, Jean has held senior roles at major institutions, including the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the Centre de Conservation du Québec. Her portfolio is expansive, ranging from the technical analysis of organic artifacts and complex composite objects to a keen interest and experience with historic plastics. She is a member of the Plastics Historical Society.
Jenny Durrant (she/her)
Dr Jenny Durrant is a specialist in collections management and ethics, based in the UK and working internationally. Her ‘paradigm-shifting’ book Deaccessioning Museum Objects: Transparency and Ethics in Disposal Practice explores the practical and emotional tensions of removing objects from public collections. She has nearly 25 years’ experience in curation and collections management and is a member of the UK Museums Association Ethics Committee.
Shannon Garden-Smith (she/her)
Shannon Garden-Smith is an artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada, of Scottish and Irish settler heritage. Garden-Smith is currently pursuing a PhD in Visual Art at York University, having previously earned an MFA at the University of Guelph and Honours BA at the University of Toronto. Primarily working across sculpture and installation, Garden-Smith engages with the mutability and poetics of the lithic environment. She seeks to unsettle naturalized relationships to its extraction, drawing on sand and stone’s ability to hold complex possibilities for time, memory, and different futures. She has exhibited nationally and internationally with projects at MKG127 (Tkaronto), TIER: The Institute for Endotic Research (Berlin), among several others. Her practice has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, and Ontario Graduate Scholarship. She was a 2025 finalist for the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Artist Prize.
Camile Georgeson-Usher (she/her)
Camille Georgeson-Usher is a Coast Salish / Sahtu Dene / Scottish scholar, curator, and writer from Galiano Island, BC. She is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Indigenous Art at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, and is the Audain Senior Curatorial Advisor on Indigenous Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Through her work she engages with theoretical research through curatorial methodologies with a particular focus on building kinship systems across the Pacific Ocean. She simultaneously uses her practice as a long-distance runner as a methodology for embodied theory and an alternative form of sensing place.
Fiona Graham (she/her)
Fiona Graham is an accredited professional conservator specializing in preventive conservation. For over 35 years she has helped museums of all sizes preserve their collections, together finding pragmatic solutions based on real collection needs and institutional context. Recently, she has worked with energy experts in the area of sustainable climate control for museums in Canada, the US, Denmark, France, and Spain. Fiona is also a skilled and dynamic trainer.
Chiraz Guellela (she/her)
Chiraz Guellela is an Assistant Heritage Conservation Advisor with the Heritage Places Conservation Division at the Canadian Conservation Institute. She brings an international background in architecture, heritage conservation, archaeology, and heritage site management, including experience contributing to the stewardship of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Carthage. Throughout her career, she has contributed to heritage documentation, conservation, and research projects, with a focus on the sustainable management of cultural heritage resources. She holds a degree in Architecture from the School of Architecture and Urbanism of Tunisia and pursued advanced studies in Ancient History at the University of Human and Social Sciences of Tunis. Her professional interests include heritage conservation, risk management, climate resilience, and the application of Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM) to support the conservation and stewardship of heritage places.
Germaine Koh (she/her)
Germaine Koh is an artist and organizer whose work ranges widely across media. Her work adapts familiar objects, everyday actions, and common spaces to create situations that look at the significance of communal experiences and the connections between people, technology, and natural systems. Koh’s ongoing projects include the Slow Fashion Season events encouraging sustainability in textiles and clothing; the Home Made Home initiative to build and advocate for alternative forms of housing; the League project focused on play as a form of creative practice; and the Hemlock Micro Studio land-based artist residency. Koh received a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2023 and was a 2023-24 Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University. She served as the City of Vancouver’s first Engineering Artist in Residence in 2018-20 and since 2024 is an Assistant Professor in Visual Art at University of British Columbia. [https://germainekoh.com]
Ingenium: Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation
Biography coming soon.
Kim Kraczon (she/her)
Kim Kraczon is a Berlin-based conservator of modern materials and contemporary art whose practice centers on developing and implementing sustainable practices in the visual arts sector. She focuses on reducing the socio-environmental impact of materials and methods used in conservation, art production, exhibition-making, and fine art transport. In collaboration with non-profit organizations such as Gallery Climate Coalition and Ki Culture, Kraczon creates online resources and tools that support a more ethical and environmentally sustainable art sector. Carrying out research at the intersection of sustainability and cultural heritage, she regularly leads workshops and delivers lectures on conservation ethics and sustainable strategies for museum professionals, gallery staff, and university students.
Kristine McCorkell (they/iel)
Kristine McCorkell (Kanien’keha:ka, Six Nations of the Grand River) is a Two-Spirit curator and researcher who joined the Canadian Museum of History in 2022. In their role stewarding the Indigenous Arts collection, Kristine champions a curatorial practice grounded in relationality, community collaboration, and critical reflections. Their curatorial vision focuses on Indigiqueer/Two-Spirit art, positioning artists and their creative practices as vital, disruptive interventions to dominant heteropatriarchal colonial narratives. Currently, Kristine is driving the strategic development and acquisitions of a dedicated Indigenous 2SLGBTQ+ art collections. Their specific areas of inquiry explore Indigenous body sovereignty and kink as method within Indigiqueer/Two-Spirit artistic expressions. Kristine holds BA (Honours) in English and an MA in Canadian Studies, both from Carleton University.
Marie-Claude Mongeon (she/her)
Marie-Claude Mongeon works at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, where she oversees, among other things, the institution’s governance activities and its strategic plan. Previously, she worked at the National Gallery of Canada for more than 15 years, where she held various positions within the Exhibitions and Outreach department and its Foundation, in addition to initiating a committee on eco-responsibility. She holds two bachelor’s degrees from the University of Ottawa in the arts, an International Baccalaureate in Natural Sciences, a graduate diploma from St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto in Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility, and is working towards a master’s degree in management and sustainable development at HEC Montréal. She currently is the Vice-President of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Museums Association.
Peter Pavement (he/him)
Peter brings over 30 years of experience in the cultural sector, spanning design, publishing, exhibition curation, and digital innovation. His projects have supported leading organizations, including the British Museum, Arts Council England, and the Royal Collections Trust. Peter continues to grow Surface Impression’s international reach, driving innovation in user experience, accessibility, and digital engagement for GLAM organizations.
Kirsty Robertson (she/her)
Dr. Kirsty Robertson is Canada Research Chair in Museums, Art, and Sustainability, in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University. She also directs the Centre for Sustainable Curating (CSC), which supports research on waste, pollution, and the climate crisis, and the development of low-waste, low-carbon exhibitions and artworks. Robertson has published extensively in critical museum studies, including in her book Tear Gas Epiphanies: Protest, Museums, Culture (MQUP, 2019), and in her forthcoming work Countering the Museum: Activism at the Limits of the Institution (Museums in Focus Series, Routledge). Robertson has curated exhibitions in Paris, Toronto, Ottawa, New York, and London (ON), and has presented her work in venues around the world. She is a founding member of the Synthetic Collective, an art-STEM collaboration addressing plastics pollution in the Great Lakes Region, co-lead with Dr. Eugenia Kisin on A Museum for Future Fossils, an ongoing project that responds curatorially to ecological crisis, and co-director with Dr. Heather Igloliorte of As It Melts: Indigenous Artistic Responses to Plastics Pollution.
Sarah E.K. Smith (she/her)
Sarah E.K. Smith is a scholar and curator whose research addresses cultural diplomacy, contemporary art, museums, and creative labour. She is the Canada Research Chair in Art, Culture and Global Relations at Western University, where she leads the Cultural Exchange Studio in the Faculty of Information & Media Studies, which is an incubator for co-producing research with artists and culture workers. At Western, Sarah also actively contributes to the Centre for Sustainable Curating, including the research project Canadian Museums Can Make a Difference (2023-2026) and the exhibition The Air of the Now and Gone (2025). Sarah is the author of Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America (UBC Press 2025) and the co-editor of Museum Diplomacy: How Cultural Institutions Shape Global Engagement (American Alliance of Museums/Bloomsbury 2023). She is co‐founder of the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative and a member of the International Cultural Relations Research Alliance.
Zainub Verjee (she/her)
Dr. Zainub Verjee, C.M., R.C.A., is Executive Director of Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries (GOG), where she is leading the development of a national digital data service and architecture that is transforming how Canada’s public art galleries collect, analyze, and use data to strengthen the sector, inform policy, and support strategic decision-making. Her work focuses on advancing the capacity and resilience of cultural institutions through research, data, advocacy, and collaborative innovation, supporting evidence-based decision-making and long-term sector sustainability. One of Canada’s leading cultural diplomats and strategists, Dr. Verjee has shaped arts, heritage, and cultural policy through senior leadership roles with the Western Front Society, the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, and the City of Mississauga. A Senior Fellow at Massey College and McLaughlin College Fellow at York University, she is the recipient of the 2020 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for Outstanding Contribution and has received multiple honorary doctorates in recognition of her leadership and impact.
Allison Ward (she/her | elle/la)
Allison Ward holds a Master of Architecture specializing in Heritage and Conservation from the École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Toulouse as well as a B.A. (Hons) in Architecture and Philosophy from the University of Toronto. With nearly two decades of experience, her technical expertise is in the design, restoration and rehabilitation of historic buildings. Her portfolio includes more than 50 built heritage conservation projects completed across Canada, the UK, France, Ireland and Poland. As a Heritage Conservation Advisor at the Canadian Conservation Institute and a member of the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals, she develops tools and provides recommendations that support equitable and culturally grounded stewardship of historic places.
Partnering institutions:
