Welcome to the Kingston Association of Museums, Art Galleries & Historic Sites!
We are a not-for-profit professional network and collaborative resource hub supporting the Kingston region's cultural heritage sector.
The Kingston Association of Museums, Art Galleries and Historic Sites, otherwise known as KAM, first emerged 40 years ago as a community-initiated, professional support network to promote public awareness and increase engagement across Kingston’s cultural heritage sites through collective promotional and programming initiatives. KAM is also engaged in supporting its membership through the dissemination of information, sector best practices, and professional development opportunities.
Our members range from federally owned sites with professional staff, to sites which are member-owned and volunteer operated. Some operate seasonally; others are open year round. Many have specialist collections that tell the stories and histories of our communities from local, regional and national perspectives. From its inception, KAM was driven by the ideal that by working collaboratively, despite differences in size, mandates and resources, cultural heritage sites and organizations could quite simply; do better together, improving practice and strengthening their connections within and across communities.
2020 marks our 40th anniversary and we have much to celebrate. As the professional network and resource hub within Kingston’s cultural heritage landscape, KAM is committed to facilitating a resilient, innovative and responsive cultural heritage sector within the Kingston and area community.
We recognize that our work, and the work of our members, takes place on Indigenous territories across Eastern Ontario.
A new exhibition by Viara Mileva looks at the moments of life that often go unnoticed–the everyday moments when we find pure joy. This photographic study of five families in Lennox and Addington County illustrates how the ordinary can become the extraordinary. To view this exhibit, I set off from the west end of Kingston, tracing highway 2 through farmland to Napanee, a pleasant half-hour...
Credit: Museum of Lennox and Addington
I knew to find the museum behind the County Courthouse in a stone building that once housed the county jail cells. I took a moment to appreciate the stonework before entering the museum. Once inside, I was quickly drawn to Mileva’s photographs. They vividly capture family life: skating on a backyard rink, milking the cows, and gazing at a bug.
Credit: Helen Cutts
The parent-child relationship is an important theme, perhaps not surprisingly since Mileva is a scientist in the area of family dynamics, having earned her PhD in this field. She analyzed the tiny changes in facial expressions as mothers played with their babies. Now her focus on relationships has come alive in her photography. Her exhibition will be on display until January 7, 2022.
Credit: Viara Mileva Photography
Focusing on people is also at the heart of the Museum of Lennox and Addington. It is essentially a community hub that brings people together with special events every month. For the past seven years (since its major renovation and expansion) it has been offering a wide variety of programs in the areas of history, music and art. In the upcoming schedule you’ll find film showings, art programs for children and adults and lectures.
On November 9, the museum is offering a live screening of The War at Home, followed by a talk and question period by filmmaker Dale Morrisey. This documentary about World War 2 describes the new challenges and opportunities for women when men joined the war effort, covering topics such as farming, professional sports and the Gibbard furniture factory. Register in advance for either the 2pm or the 7pm event.
Factory work during WW2
History is also on the agenda on November 23, when Adele Crowder, a retired ecologist and professor emerita at Queen’s University, will give a talk about a farming family in the Odessa area based on a diary by Lucy Stover Davidson. The visuals accompanying the talk have been prepared by Eleanor Crowder, a writer, actor and director, who will draw from historical photographs in the museum’s collection.
1908 road crew. Credit: Museum of Lennox and Addington Archives
On leaving the museum, I decided to drive over to Springside Park to experience the everyday moments of life. It was lunch time and a number of people had stopped in the park to enjoy the falls and the riverside pathway while several others were fishing. Everyday life, I thought.
Springside Park. Credit: Helen Cutts
I heard excited voices as one young man spotted a large salmon swimming in the shallow water. Soon he had it on his line, then in his net, and in the next moment, he was posing for a friend to snap a photo. He gently placed the fish back in the river and it swam away. Springside Park, just a two-minute drive from the museum, is always a pretty spot to include in an outing to Napanee, but on that day in mid-October, it was a celebration of everyday life.
Credit: Helen Cutts
Credit for cover photo: Viara Mileva Photography
Helen Cutts, KAM Visitor in Residence, Writer 
