Community Conversations: Who Decides What We Keep?
Date:
Thu, Sep 24th, 2026Time:
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Description:
What gets saved, what gets discarded, and who gets to decide? Presented in conjunction with Mary Kavanagh’s Opera Obscura , this Community Conversation brings together professionals working across archives, museums, collections, and emerging technologies to explore the often-invisible decisions that shape our collective memory.
From the careful work of preserving objects and records to the difficult choices surrounding deaccessioning, digitization, and access, archives are not neutral repositories—they are continually shaped by decisions about what is considered valuable, relevant, and worth carrying forward.
As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in the ways we create, organize, search, and interpret information, those questions are becoming even more complicated. Can AI help us care for and access our archives, or does it introduce new risks of distortion, erasure, and misinformation? And in an age when more of our cultural record is born digital, what does it actually mean to preserve something?
Join us for an accessible, lively conversation about care, memory, technology, and the choices that determine what survives for the future. No specialized knowledge required—just bring your questions and curiosity.
Opera Obscura is a large-scale installation by Canadian artist Mary Kavanagh. In this new work, she turns her attention to one of the defining institutions of civic life: the library. The project investigates the library as both repository and site of cultural negotiation — an institution through which knowledge is ordered, preserved, overwritten, or erased. The work confronts incremental transformations shaping public institutions — technological change, economic pressures, and shifting political priorities — that quietly alter the conditions through which knowledge circulates.
The conversation will be moderated by Vernon Public Art Gallery board members and is open for the public to join. Entry is by donation.
Venue:
Vernon Public Art Gallery
Address:3228-31st Avenue, Vernon, V1T 2H3
Cost:
n/aTicketing and/or registration:
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