HISTORY & MANDATE

Wedge Curatorial Projects (WCP) is a non-profit organization with a focus on Black identity in contemporary art. Wedge organizes exhibitions and lectures that explore Diasporic narratives, identity, and issues of representation. Exhibiting local and international artists, Wedge is fueled by collaboration, creativity, and accessibility in the arts.

Wedge was established in 1997 by Kenneth Montague and evolved from a commercial gallery into a curatorial organization. Originally conceived to be both a private and public art experience, the original gallery was located in Montague’s home in Toronto, literally ‘wedged’ inside the hallway of his loft.  Wedge Curatorial Projects quickly became a well-respected initiative that "wedged" black artists into a mainstream market and filled a gap in Toronto’s art community.

For over 20 years WCP has worked with local and international organizations to create original exhibitions, collaborate with guest curators and artists, host lectures and educational programs, publish books, and programming that speak to youth about shaping their own identity.

DIRECTOR

DR. KENNETH MONTAGUE is a Toronto-based art collector and the founder and director of Wedge Curatorial Projects, a non-profit organization that supports emerging and established African and Diasporic artists. Since 1997 Montague has been exhibiting contemporary art that explores Black identity and showcasing these works within his growing Wedge Collection.

Montague grew up in a Jamaican-Canadian family on the border of Canada and America; his family was one of the first Jamaican immigrants in the community and closely immersed in issues of race and representation.

He has served on the Africa Acquisitions Committee at Tate Modern, London,the Advisory Board of the Ryerson Image Centre, and the Photography Curatorial Committee of the Art Gallery of Ontario; he is currently an AGO Trustee and an Advisor to the Global Africa Department. For his ongoing work with emerging artists and young creatives, Montague received an honorary doctorate from OCAD University, Toronto in 2016. A photobook featuring works from his Wedge Collection will be published by Aperture Foundation in Fall 2021.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

WARREN CRICHLOW, PhD, is a professor at York University in Toronto. He teaches graduate courses in Cultural Studies, Globalization and Migration, Museums and Culture, Urban Education, Educational Theory, and Research Methodology, as well as undergraduate courses in Foundations of Education and Popular Culture. Crichlow has published widely on topics related to race and education, arts and education, and film, and visual culture. Current research initiatives include the development of a transnational, collaborative project on media arts practices in schools and communities in Canada, Argentina and the U.S. and a collaborative project with the University of the Arts in Zurich developing an international network for research and cultural analysis of art education. He sits on the Advisory Board of the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU), and is active in the Gallery’s innovative contemporary art and education outreach initiatives with local school-communities.

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SOPHIE HACKETT is the Curator, Photography, at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Toronto and adjunct faculty in Ryerson University’s master’s program in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management. Hackett joined the AGO in 2006 as Assistant Curator, Photography. Among many accomplishments, Hackett has played a key role in acquiring major bodies of work, including the Garry Winogrand, Malcolmson and Casa Susanna collections, and developed a powerful series of exhibitions that have increased the reach of the AGO’s photography program, including What It Means To Be Seen: Photography and Queer Visibility and Fan the Flames: Queer Positions in Photography in 2014; and Outsiders: American Photography and Film, 1950s-1980s in 2016. Hackett’s other curatorial projects during her tenure at the AGO include Barbara Kruger: Untitled (It) (2010); Songs of the Future: Canadian Industrial Photographs, 1858 to Today(2011); Max Dean: Album, A Public Project (2012); and Introducing Suzy Lake (2014).
In 2017, Hackett was the lead juror for the Aimia | AGO Photography Prize, a role she also held in 2010, 2012 and 2014. She launched the AGO’s new galleries for the Photography Collection in April 2017. Hackett was a recent 2017 Fellow with the Center for Curatorial Leadership, completing a residency at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley. She continues to write for art magazines, international journals and artist monographs. Her recent publications include “Queer Looking: Joan E. Biren’s Slide Shows” in Aperture (Spring 2015) and “Encounters in the Museum: The Experience of Photographic Objects” in the edited volume The “Public” Life of Photographs (Ryerson Image Centre and MIT Press, 2016). Hackett is the co-curator of the exhibition Anthropocene, the latest project by collaborators Edward Burtynsky, Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, opening at the AGO and the National Gallery of Canada in September 2018.

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ANDREW GARRETT is Senior Principal, Real Estate at IMCO. He is responsible for growing the global real estate portfolio through strategy development, proactive asset management, and new investment partnerships. His primary focus is overseeing teams of asset managers and expanding the portfolio with new development partners in major global cities.
Before joining IMCO in 2019, Andrew spent more than 12 years at Cadillac Fairview (CF), where he was Director, Real Estate Development. In that role, he built and oversaw the team of specialists that evaluated and prioritized development-related growth opportunities to meet the long-term objectives of CF’s owner, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. Andrew holds a Global Executive MBA from Kellogg School Management and a Real Estate Development Certification from MIT Centre for Real Estate.
Andrew sits on the board advisory committees for real estate private equity firms KingSett Capital, Royal York Hotel LP, Carttera, and Forgestone Capital. He also founded a B Corp social enterprise and serves on the management committee of the Urban Land Institute, supporting and advising on social purpose real estate projects.