No Ducks Redux
This year marked a new beginning for No Ducks. First launched in 2020, during the Owens’ COVID-19 pandemic closure, this online venue for art criticism was originally designed to give aspiring student writers at Mount Allison University the opportunity to work with an experienced, professional art critic. In addition to writing about exhibitions and art on campus, students were encouraged to explore contemporary art issues and review exhibitions at other galleries. As a result of this program, interns like Noah Lubendo went on to publish art criticism elsewhere.
Building on this success, in 2022, the Owens decided to take No Ducks in a new direction. While keeping the publication student-run and student-centred, we opened it to other perspectives, including recent graduates and emerging art critics working in, or with ties to, the Atlantic Region. Part of this shift also included hiring fourth-year Fine Arts Student, Chloe Lundrigan, as our Managing Editor for the year. Lundrigan devised the theme for this year’s articles, wrote the call for pitches, and encouraged student writers. They worked closely with me to assemble a coherent group of texts and shadowed me during the editing and copyediting process. They even redesigned the No Ducks logo! Together we collaborated with curator Emily Critch, who gave us valuable feedback on the theme, and helped us invite Flora Chubbs to contribute a fantastic essay. I would like to thank both Flora and Emily for their generous support of No Ducks. I would also like to thank Chloe for their creativity, honesty, and critical thinking, which makes them a wonderful collaborator.
An important impetus for shifting the direction of No Ducks is the state of art criticism in the Atlantic. For decades, art practices in the region have received less critical attention, because art critics working here tend to be excluded from national publications. Currently, art criticism from the Atlantic can be found in Visual Arts News and Billie, with occasional reviews on Akimblog and art journalism in magazines like Saltscapes and Edit. Reviews appear more rarely in publications like Vie des arts, Espace art actuel or esse arts + opinions, while Canadian Art Magazine folded during the pandemic. Interestingly, Canadian Art Magazine began its life as Maritime Art Magazine, a publication of the Maritime Art Association, which was started in 1935 by Walter Abell (Acadia University) and Elizabeth McLeod (Mount Allison University). The situation for French art criticism in the Atlantic is even more difficult, a problem that the Owens and Galerie d’art Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen (Université de Moncton) sought to address through a recent partnership with the Québec magazine Vie des arts called Entre les lignes : Incubateur de la pensée écrite. Efforts to nurture and support art criticism in the region are ongoing, and I beleive No Ducks has an important role to play in these activities.
— Emily Falvey, Director/Curator, Owens Art Gallery, 2023
No Ducks was originally made possible thanks to the assistance of the J.E.A. Crake Foundation’s Artswork Intern program. This year, we are extremely grateful to receive special funding from the Marjorie Young Bell Fine Arts and Music Award at Mount Allison University. Additional funding was provided by the Friends of the Owens Art Gallery.
We would like to acknowledge that Mount Allison University is located within the traditional territory of Mi’kma’ki, the unceded ancestral homelands of the Mi’kmaq. Our relationship and our privilege to live on this territory was agreed upon in the Peace and Friendship Treaties of 1725 to 1752. Because of this treaty relationship, it is to be acknowledged that we are all Treaty People and have a responsibility to respect this territory.
