Sharing news of recent retirements of the wonderful Gillian McIntyre, and Donald Rance. We know volunteers have long enjoyed both presentations and research help from Donald and Gillian – for so many of us they also feel like family! We will all miss their presence and amazing institutional history.
Gillian McIntyre, Interpretive Planner
Gillian has had a long and distinguished career at the Gallery, reaching all the way back to 1995 when she was an intern here as part of the University of Toronto’s Museum Studies Master’s Program.
In 1997, Gillian was hired to train and coordinate a group of teens to work with families in the AGO’s first exhibition devoted to the work of Keith Haring. This project led to the formation of the Gallery’s inaugural youth program, Teens Behind the Scenes, which ran successfully from 1997 to 2021. Meanwhile, last year, Gillian worked closely with Georgiana Uhlyarik and the team to deliver our current Haring exhibition Art is for Everybody, so her career at the AGO, in many ways, has come full circle.
Gillian was hired to work full-time at the AGO in the position of Adult Program Coordinator in 2001. In addition to the regular programming of lecture series and courses designed to engage as broad an audience as possible, her work included pioneering programs such as In Your Face: the people’s portrait project (2006), which invited people to send in original postcard-sized portraits. We received 17,000 portraits from members of the public reflecting the individuality and diversity of Canada. The exhibition was on display at the AGO for 18 months and then travelled to Ottawa for a further year. From 2008 to 2011, Gillian designed and coordinated a three-year program funded by the Weston Family Foundation for people living with schizophrenia and other forms of mental illness. This included creating an advisory group with psychiatrists and social workers from the University Hospital Network.
While Gillian was Adult Program Coordinator, her job expanded to include interpretive planning, starting with the African Gallery from 2005 to 2008 and an array of exhibitions over the next few years. Her first exhibition assignment in 2013 as a temporary Interpretive Planner (IP) was Ai Weiwei: According to What? She moved into a permanent role as an IP in 2015 and has since worked on numerous exhibitions and installations across all our curatorial departments. Her final accomplishment was to manage a virtual reality project on the ship model Bristol 1775: From Warship to Prison Hulk.
The Curatorial Team wishes Gillian well in her next chapter. We thank her for being a wonderful colleague and for her many years of dedicated work on behalf of the audiences we serve. Gillian’s last day is Friday January 19.
Donald Rance, Reference Librarian
Donald started at the AGO in 1983 and has been a key member of the Library Reference Team, assisting with the research for countless exhibitions, acquisitions and book projects over the course of his career. Donald has curated the library’s Artists’ Books and Multiples collection for many years, building it into one of Canada’s foremost collections in this area and hosting memorable class visits for a generation of students. His talent for library acquisitions is also reflected in the depth of the library’s main book collection. We will miss his extraordinary helpfulness and the true joy he finds in putting a desired book in the hands of a reader. Donald will be enjoying his retirement with family in Vancouver.
Upon Donald’s retirement, please direct library acquisitions to Erin Rutherford, Collection Development Librarian, at [email protected], and research inquiries to the Reference Desk at [email protected]. Donald’s last day at the Gallery was January 4.