Darlene Coward Wight

Darlene Wight was born in Picton, Ontario and attended Peterborough Teachers' College (1967-1968); Carleton University, Ottawa, where she received her B.A. in Art History (with honors) in 1978, and her M.A. (with distinction), in 1980. She worked at Carleton U as a teaching assistant in art history (1978-1979), then as the fine arts curator for Canadian Arctic Producers, Ottawa (1981-1984) and as an independent curator and researcher, Ottawa (1983-1986). She was hired by the Winnipeg Art Gallery as associate curator of Inuit art (1986-1998), and became curator in 1998.[1]

Wight helped make the Inuit Collection at WAG become more representative, geographically and chronologically. By 2013, after she received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Manitoba (2012),[2] the WAG was said to have the largest collection of contemporary Inuit art in the world, or half of its permanent collection.[3] The gallery had collected Inuit art since 1957, initially, in part, due to Winnipeg’s business dealings with the Arctic,[4] that is the city's historical status as a trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC).[5] Since 1972, there has been a full-time curator at the gallery for this collection.[6] As the first curator of Inuit art, Jean Blodgett developed the gallery’s Inuit art collection, producing solo and group exhibitions with many catalogue publications.[5]

Under Wight’s stewardship, major developments in Inuit art were defined and the collection doubled in size.[7] She co-authored the story of contemporary Inuit art of Canada in the book catalogue which she edited for her major survey exhibition, Creation and Transformation: Defining Moments in Inuit Art (2014) which drew on 250 pieces from the gallery’s collection and was co-published by the gallery and Douglas & McIntyre. It received the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction from the Manitoba Writers Guild (2013)[8] and Goodreads gave it four out of five stars.[9] She also authored the on-line book Oviloo Tunnille: Life and Work available at https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/oviloo-tunnillie.

Among the close to 100 exhibitions she coordinated and/or curated, Wight organized for the Winnipeg Art Gallery such major exhibitions as Out of Tradition, a 1989 exhibition of carvings by the brothers Abraham Anghik and David Ruben Piqtoukun.[10] She has been a regular contributor to Inuit Art Quarterly and has authored about 50 articles, papers and invited lectures.[2] She has given lectures on Inuit art across Canada and the U.S.[3]

• Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Manitoba (2012),[2]
• Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction from the Manitoba Writers Guild (2013)[8]
• The YMCA-YWCA Women of Distinction Award (2017)[11]