What Can a University Gallery Do?

University art galleries can serve wide and varied purposes. Like traditional art galleries and art museums, the conventional university art gallery may take on the role of preserving and archiving particular histories by amassing curated collections of cultural value along with showcasing curated contemporary and period artworks and artists. While the conventional, well-funded gallery may be focused on the past, securing objects to remember it, unfunded galleries are pressed to gaze forward, to rethink their roles. This chapter describes how The LAIR Galleries, a collection of gallery sites at Lakehead University's Thunder Bay, Ontario campus, seeks to build flourishing communities and research capacity. To answer the focal question, What can a university gallery do?, the LAIR Galleries’ evolving vision, history, functions, and current considerations are described in this chapter.

Keywords: arts integrated research ; cross-community engagement ; developing university wellness ; diverse research methodologies ; interdisciplinary frameworks ; LAIR Galleries ; Lakehead ; Lakehead Arts Integrated Research Galleries ; mentorship ; museum education ; pedagogical site ; research and innovation ; research capacity ; university gallery