The North West Ceramics Foundation is pleased to announce their next speaker on Sunday, October 19, 2025, at 1PM PST, Canadian craft scholar and curator Denis Longchamps. The presentation on Zoom is free and open to all, but registration is required. Please see here or below for information as to how to register.
An art consultant and appraiser with more than 25 years of experience in the Fine Art, Decorative Arts and Craft fields, Denis Longchamps was, until July 2025, the Executive Director & Chief Curator at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery. From 2013 to 2018, he was the Artistic Director and Chief Curator at the Art Gallery of Burlington. He received his PhD in art history in 2009 from Concordia University, where he was the administrator of the Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art from 2006 to 2011. Longchamps has taught art and craft history at Concordia University, York University and at Dawson College. He has contributed essays, articles and reviews to magazines and journals such as Espace-Sculpture, Ceramics Monthly, and Ceramics Art and Perception, and, he was the publisher and managing editor of Cahiers métiers d’art: Craft Journal from 2006-2016. In 2020, Denis received the Craft Ontario John and Barbara Mather Award for Lifetime Achievement, and, in 2023, he received the Barbara A. Tyler Award in Museum Leadership from The Canadian Museum Association.
His recent curatorial projects for the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery demonstrate the breadth of his interests. Irene Frolic: A Retrospective (2025) celebrates the 40-year career of one of Canada’s most important glass sculptors; Remembrance Every Day (2025), a national exhibition, reflects on the solemn importance of Remembrance Day; Beyond the Threshold (2025) sensitively addresses issues related to home and homelessness; The Decorated Surface (2023) examines the decorative work of six Canadian ceramists; and Voices (2022) brings together artists and writers to celebrate equity, diversity, and inclusion in Canadian culture.
Denis’ talk Why Crafts and Where are We Going? discusses what brought him to be a curator and scholar of the decorative arts and crafts. He will talk about his work editing and publishing the seminal journal Cahiers métier d’art/Craft Journal, and some of the major curatorial projects he has worked on. He will share his views on the field today, and what it means in a time of reconciliation, decolonization, and world unrest.
Please join us for this timely and exciting opportunity to hear from one of Canada’s preeminent voices in craft. The talk will take place on Zoom, Sunday, October 19, at 1pm PST. All are welcome, but registration is required. To register, please see here. We look forward to seeing you there!
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