"What does it mean to further the cause of art and community in the 21st century, and what would it mean to return the house back into a home? The answer was to have the guiding ethos of Agnes Reimagined – the title of the construction project – be hospitality. As conversations within institutions worldwide focus on decolonization, the Agnes renewal centres marginalized voices to create a different type of museum from the ground up.”

Queen’s University engaged Lord Cultural Resources and Moriyama & Teshima Architects for "Agnes Reimagined," a transformative plan for the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. The project envisions cutting-edge galleries, innovative education spaces and vibrant community connections, supporting world-class collections and experiential learning. It also includes dedicated spaces for Indigenous self-determination, offering Indigenous artists, staff and community members places to gather, practice traditions and celebrate culture. Spanning two phases, the study delivered a bold concept, facility programming, business planning and a design concept to shape the future of this cultural hub.

On December 5, join the Canadian Urban Institute and partners for a full day of education, inspiration, provocation, and collaboration. Lord Thought Leader Jamie Bennett is moderating a session called Culture Is Infrastructure: The Role of People, Identity, and Our Social Fabric.

“Brogent Technologies Inc., a leading manufacturer of media-based attractions, has entered into a new collaboration with Niagara Parks to launch an innovative flying theatre attraction in 2025. The new flying theatre will be built close to the iconic landmark, providing visitors with a unique chance to discover the region’s rich history and stunning scenery through an advanced immersive experience.”

Lord was engaged to conduct Interpretive Planning for the adaptive reuse of the Canadian Niagara Power Generating Station as an attraction that incorporates and celebrates the rich heritage of the power station and Niagara Parks.

“Lightscape, Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s after-dark illuminated trail, returns this winter from November 22, 2024, to January 5, 2025. Now in its fourth year, Lightscape has become a contemporary holiday classic for New York City, offering a magical seasonal experience for visitors of all ages.”

“The exhibition features 10 original artworks by Black artists from Hannah-Jones’ illustrated art book, The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience. The publication was released five years after the original special 100-page issue of the New York Times Magazine created by Hannah-Jones, which won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2020.”

Lord conducted the feasibility study that identified this location for the Central Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.

“Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson has been awarded a prestigious 2024 Richard H. Driehaus Foundation National Preservation Award, presented by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. After decades of neglect the historic stadium, one of five remaining Negro League ballparks, was rehabilitated and modernized.”

“Canadians' top human rights concerns are about censorship, inequality and racism, suggests a survey commissioned by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, while access to health care and education are a major worry for far fewer respondents. Meanwhile, among the rights that people feel are stronger in Canada now than a decade ago, Indigenous rights and gender equity topped the survey list, followed by rights of refugees and asylum seekers and accessibility/opportunities for those with disabilities.”

“The mystery surrounding the death of Tom Thomson has often overshadowed the work of this influential Canadian landscape artist — considered an inspiration for the Group of Seven. He died a tragic death in 1917 at the age of 39, having disappeared while canoeing in Ontario's Algonquin Park. But a new exhibition at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery seeks to draw attention away from Thomson's death and toward his artistic prowess.” 

“Found on the southwest side of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County campus in Exposition Park, NHM Commons is a $75 million expansion and renovation project. It includes 75,000 square feet of renovated and new spaces, with accessible outdoor areas, a 400-seat multi-purpose theatre, a new café, and updated retail offerings. The wing is designed with transparent glass so people can see inside.”

Lord Cultural Resources was engaged by The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County to develop a financial model and business plan for the redesign of the La Brea Tar Pits. Our team developed a two phased process that includes thorough research and analysis of the envisioned operation leading to a sustainable Business Plan.

“The Chinese Canadian Museum is proud to announce it has won this year’s Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Museums: History Alive!, Canada’s most prestigious history museum award. The award is a partnership between the Canadian Museums Association (CMA) and Canada’s History Society (CHS), with the support of Ecclesiastical Insurance and will be presented by Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon, Governor General of Canada at an upcoming ceremony.”

“Rockford Area Arts Council has made a bid to buy the vacant former Illinois National Guard Armory with a long-term goal of creating a cultural civic center with artist live and work spaces. The effort also ties into the recently completed cultural plan, a strategic roadmap developed over 18 months to identify priorities for integrating the arts into areas across the city. Developing a signature cultural space was a key part of that plan.” 

Lord Cultural Resources was engaged by the Rockford Area Arts Council to develop the Rockford Region Cultural Plan to support a thriving arts and culture sector that will benefit all who live and work in the region.

“The Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland has reached a ‘just and fair’ deal to compensate the heirs of a Jewish collector who sold his prized painting by Camille Pissarro to escape persecution by the Nazis in 1933.”

“A Biden-appointed archivist overseeing the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC, reportedly cut mentions of negative events in United States history from planned displays over the past year, including references to the government’s mass displacement of Native American communities and the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans.”

“Organizers accused the museum and its affiliates of actively harming Chinatown’s residents and economy by accepting a ‘community buy-back’ for the construction of a new jail and of being complicit in the closure of a banquet hall in the neighborhood.”

“Produced while Fra Angelico was a young man in the 1420s, The Crucifixion with the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist, and the Magdalen, in which sensitively modeled figures stand out against a gold ground, is an exquisite example of this stylistic shift in its very earliest years.”

“A new development known as ‘Gansevoort Square’ would include housing and around 45,000 square feet set aside for the Whitney and the High Line.”

"Why have expressions of decolonisation become so popular? And is there coherence to these many disparate uses of the term?”

“Police said the man allegedly defaced the pillar of a shrine gate in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward on Tuesday, ‘carving the alphabet with his fingernails.’ According to public broadcaster NHK, five letters – believed to be the tourist’s family name – were allegedly etched into a gate pillar at Tokyo’s Meiji Shrine.”

“The marble tablet, which weighs 115 pounds and measures about two feet in height, will go on display at Sotheby’s New York beginning December 5. It will then hit the block in a single-lot sale on December 18, with an estimate of $1–2 million.”

“Resistance culture is unlikely to return. Something totally new needs to be created from this wreckage.”

“A new research brief released today by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) examines recent patterns of arts engagement among U.S. adults, and the relationship between arts engagement and social connectedness. The findings come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey from April to July 2024.”

“In August, the provincial government announced the building would be demolished and turned into a green space, sparking strong opposition from the community. The news pushed an architectural firm and development company in Edmonton to team up to save the landmark from the landfill.”

“New Yorkers were initially skeptical of the Flatiron’s design, and critics predicted it might collapse. The New York Tribune deemed it ‘the greatest inanimate troublemaker in New York.’ At the time, steel-frame construction was met with caution by the general public, who feared that such tall, slender buildings might not be stable.”

“Created in partnership with Paramount Pictures, the exclusive gladiator offering follows on from Airbnb’s donation of $1.5 million to support the restoration of the Colosseum, a move the San Francisco company plans to repeat at heritage sites across Europe. The pushback to the Colosseum experience was firm and immediate.”

“Creating Adventurous Places (CAP.Co), the adventure play specialist, and Newhaven Fort, a heritage site in East Sussex, UK, have unveiled details of a new adventure playground as part of the attraction’s £7.5 million restoration project.”

“Merlin Entertainment, the British theme park company which operates the global range of Legoland theme parks, Madame Tussauds’ waxwork museums, Sea Life waterparks, and Peppa Pig parks alongside other UK attractions, has entered into a deal with Mojang Studios, the creators of ‘Minecraft’.”

“The small, unadorned church has long ranked as the oldest in the Swiss city of Lucerne. But Peter’s chapel has become synonymous with all that is new after it installed an artificial intelligence-powered Jesus capable of dialoguing in 100 different languages.”

“A portrait of English mathematician Alan Turing has become the first artwork by a humanoid robot to be sold at auction, fetching US$1.08m (£566,000, A$1.63m) in New York on Thursday. The 2.2 metre (7.5 feet) portrait, titled A.I. God. Portrait of Alan Turing, was created by Ai-Da, the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist.”

“Lemieux says places in the GLAM sector — galleries, libraries, archives and museums — have become more susceptible to sophisticated hacking attempts. But compared to other sectors, like banks, their security infrastructure is not as robust.”

“The Yale Peabody Museum has flagged human remains and eight funerary objects in its collection for repatriation to Native American tribes of the Wabanaki Nations in Maine. These remains and objects were removed from burial sites and shell mounds in Maine and donated to the museum in 1926 and 1969.”

“A marble head of a man dating from 150 CE has been returned to Greece by the University of Münster’s Archaeological Museum in Germany. The museum voluntarily returned the artefact, part of a funerary relief from a cemetery, after researchers raised concerns about its ownership history. The sculpture will now go on display at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city.”

“This week, US federal officials and representatives of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office returned an enormous cache of 1,440 antiquities to Indian authorities in a ceremony at the Consulate General of India in New York. The repatriated objects, collectively valued at $10m, include artefacts that were sold by the traffickers Subhash Kapoor and Nancy Wiener, at least two of which were acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and had been on view there for years.”

“The inhabitants of this museum are not people but objects brought to France via colonialist conquests. Among her film’s subjects is a grouping of more than two dozen artifacts that were looted by French soldiers from the Kingdom of Dahomey in 1892, only to finally be returned home, in present-day Benin, in 2021, more than a century later.”