The Snelgrove Salon: Part II

From the Collection of the University of Saskatchewan's Art & Art History Collection

July 12 - July 16, 2021 

Gordon Snelgrove Art Collection

The Snelgrove Salon is the exhibition portion of a larger research creation project with the aim of implementing a sustainable practice for the continued preservation, maintenance, and growth of the University of Saskatchewan’s Art & Art History Collection. This past summer, the Art & Art History Collection began its shift to a digital platform through the Gordon Snelgrove’s online database. An ongoing project, The Snelgrove Salon: Part I, is the first iteration of a multi-part, salon-style exhibition, documentation, and oral history project, that celebrates the collection as it transitions to its new digital form.

Containing artwork dating as far back as 1946, the Art & Art History Collection has acquired over 700 pieces since. Largely comprised of artwork created by students and local artists, the collection is inherently rooted in pedagogy, community and their intertwined histories. These histories are reflective of Treaty 6, Saskatoon, and the University of Saskatchewan.

The salon-style hanging of The Snelgrove Salon has allowed for more of the collection to be experienced at once than ever before; it has offered the opportunity to acknowledge the interconnected nature of this body of work, as well as the larger histories it is part of. While looking back and ruminating on these stories, the recontextualization of the individual pieces into a body of work, has revealed new connections between artworks, people and the stories that forge our community.  

On the walls of The Snelgrove Salon, the Art & Art History Collection is not only celebrated, but revitalized to bring about (re)imagined narratives and animate possibilities for new publics to engage with the works.