Mandate Vision & Guiding Principles

Who We Are

The Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery is a free public art gallery located in downtown Sarnia, Ontario. With more than 250 members, over 1,200 works of Canadian art in the permanent collection, and with the support of a keen volunteer team, the gallery serves an immediate community of 128,000 people across Lambton County.

We approach our job with a regional responsibility and an appreciation for the national sensibility; responding to issues that matter in our immediate community within the broader context of the Canadian cultural economy. We offer a variety of historical and contemporary exhibitions that, as per our mandate, focus on visual art and visual culture by Canadian artists of national and regional calibre in a dynamic environment.

Our goal is to provide the community with an exciting range of art exhibitions, tours, lectures and art programs that inspire creativity and interest in the visual arts.

Mandate, Vision and Guiding Principles

Mandate

To collect, manage, research, showcase and interpret a collection of contemporary and historically significant Canadian visual art and visual culture; to support and mentor emerging, mid-career and established contemporary artists; to provide a dynamic environment that will engage and challenge the viewer on multiple levels fostering and expanding their relationship to art.

Vision

The Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery will support the community by being a safe space that provides creative opportunities for people to connect, share stories, and discover new insights through art.

Guiding Principals

Informing the artistic vision is the recognition that the public art gallery is a social space where dialogue, debate, confrontation, personal reflection, innovation and experimentation can safely occur. That visual art and visual culture, with its capacity to embrace and reflect the multifaceted makeup of our society, is a powerful and vital medium that stimulates opportunities for creative exchange and discovery. In this regard, the JNAAG operates on the edge between art, education, and community, exploring how the visual arts can lead to new ways of thinking about, and being in the world.   Striving to remain agile, JNAAG is responsive to the changing community, to new media and to new ideas, ensuring that the artistic programs enable the visitor to make personal connections to art.

Exhibition projects and ancillary programming are thought of as an ongoing and living process. By challenging and extending the traditional, and looking for new artistic, curatorial and programming strategies we strive to make Canadian art and visual culture relevant to a wide demographic within our community. Our activities are based on the cultural dynamics of our regional community within the framework of the larger provincial and national arts community. Our responsibility is to showcase a wide range of art and art practices and to provide opportunities for engagement that draws on the experiences and stories of the region as a reference point.