CMCK Public Art was founded by Ciara McKeown in 2017 to further the critical reception of contemporary art in public space. Independent contemporary art curator and writer Diana Sherlock joined CMCK Public Art in 2018. Together, McKeown and Sherlock have over 30 years of public art, curatorial, and arts management experience.
Ciara McKeown
Ciara McKeown is founder and principal of CMCK Public Art. She works with non-profit arts organizations, government agencies, private developers, and artists across Canada and the United States to develop public art projects, public art plans, policies, and strategies.
Prior to starting CMCK Public Art, McKeown worked at Waterfront Toronto, The City of Calgary, and Hamilton Public Art programs, and with artists Sans façon, among others. She is dedicated to furthering critical conversations about public art through commissioning, research, writing, conferences, and public art events. She has been an Executive Board Member with Public Art Dialogue and was co-organizer of Public Art: New Ways of Thinking and Working, an international symposium hosted by York University. A member of the Creative City Network of Canada (CCNC), McKeown started the first public art-specific programming at CCNC’s annual summits.
She has been an organizer and invited presenter with the Alberta Public Art Network, lectured about public art at universities and arts organizations across Canada, and published texts in The Calgary Herald, Alberta Views, and with the University of Calgary’s Institute for the Humanities. McKeown holds an MA from New York University and a BA from McGill University.
Diana Sherlock
Diana Sherlock is a Canadian independent curator and visual arts writer. She has extensive knowledge of the Canadian contemporary art context with a particular focus on the contemporary art and artists of Western Canada.
She has curated dozens of contemporary art exhibitions and projects for artist-run centres, public galleries, and museums over the last thirty years, including for the Art Gallery of Alberta, Nickle Galleries, Illingworth Kerr Gallery, The Walter Phillips Gallery Banff Centre, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Stride Gallery, TRUCK Contemporary Art, and The New Gallery. In public art, she has produced context-specific projects, served on public art boards and juries, organized artist selection processes, written public art collection assessments, master plans and art strategies, and supported artists throughout all phases of the development of their projects.
Author of over eighty texts in gallery catalogues and contemporary art journals internationally, Sherlock is editor of six books including two artist’s monographs, Larissa Fassler: Viewshed (DISTANZ, Berlin, 2022), and Rita McKeough: Works (EMMEDIA Gallery & Production Society, M:ST Performative Art, and TRUCK Contemporary Art, Calgary, 2018). Sherlock taught curatorial and professional practices at the Alberta College of Art + Design (Alberta University of the Arts) for from 2000 to 2020.
