Curating Resistance: Library Exhibitions as Pedagogy, Protest and Practice

Join the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) Conference Planning Advisory Committee (CPAC) for this pre-conference that offers an opportunity to build excitement ahead of the in-person Montréal conference, taking place May 2–8, 2026. Learn more about the full conference program here.

The day will feature a panel titled Curating Resistance: Library Exhibitions as Pedagogy, Protest, and Practice. This session will explore how research libraries stage exhibitions that resist silence, amplify marginalized voices and invite new forms of public dialogue. Far from neutral, library exhibitions are increasingly important as pedagogical, political and cultural interventions. This panel speakers will explore how exhibitions rooted in library collections and curatorial practice function as acts of resistance–whether to institutional inertia, political censorship or canonical narratives.

The panel will be followed by an open meeting with the ARLIS/NA Board. Members and non-members alike are warmly invited to join us, ask questions, and get to know the association.

How can you participate? Join us in person or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca

Organized by the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) Conference Planning Advisory Committee:

Adèle Flannery, Visual arts and design librarian, Université du Québec à Montréal

Pamela Caussy, VCR (Visual Collections Repository) Manager, Concordia University

Gwen Mayhew, Head, Collection Access, Canadian Centre for Architecture

Hélène Brousseau, Digital Media and Visual Resources Librarian, Concordia University