How gallery CEO Lauren Gould tries to create a culture of care through the arts

As Lauren Gould, BA 05, sees it, two common themes have run through her 20-year career: how to get people to engage with artists and how to get artists the support they need.

In other words, how to create community through the arts, says the CEO of The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (RMG) in Oshawa, Ontario.

“There are a lot of crises happening in the world, and the loneliness epidemic is a really concerning one,” says Gould.

“I think places like the RMG can be a gathering spot for people to come together and fill up their cup with something positive, some peace and calm, something to contribute to their well-being.”

Gould has been trying to fill those cups ever since her Concordia days. She not only majored in creative writing and minored in studio art and art history, she did so while employed with University Advancement. 

Gould then moved to Liverpool, United Kingdom, where she worked at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. She returned to Canada to take on roles at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and Gardiner Museum as general manager and chief operating officer, respectively.

Now leading the RMG, a gallery specializing in Canadian contemporary and modern art, Gould sees a big part of her job as helping to create a “culture of care.”

“That’s care for artists, for the community, and for each other as staff and volunteers,” she notes.

‘I hit my career running’

When Gould thinks back to her time at Concordia, it’s the Visual Arts Building that usually comes to mind first.

“I literally lived in the café there during my first two years,” she laughs.

But it was also her fellow students and teachers, like the famous artist Françoise Sullivan, who left their mark too, she adds. 

Later, Gould worked at Concordia full-time as an alumni officer of student programs while going to school at night.

It was a tough balance, she says, but she had the energy for it in her 20s. And the experience she got in that job — which included starting a university-wide program to promote and sell art by Concordia students — was impactful.

“I hit my career running because I had those three years of professional experience working in events and fundraising,” she says. “I learned so much from my mentors and leaders there — people like Paul Chesser [BA 94, GrDip 97, now vice-president of Advancement] and Elaine Arsenault [BA 83].”

That career eventually took Gould to Liverpool, where she earned an MA in cultural leadership at Liverpool John Moores University while working as a learning officer at the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

“That’s still my favourite job,” says Gould. “I got to work with kids as young as two or three, up to adults in their 90s and 100s suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia.

“It was magical. You could see how much of an impact art can have on someone’s well-being.”

‘Growth isn’t always about bigger and better’

Gould’s current job at the RMG has been a favourite, too.

Since getting hired as CEO in 2020, she has made it part of her mission to ensure the gallery is a “gathering spot for everyone in the community to come together.”

The RMG’s free admission helps with that, but so have a couple of key projects.

One was the transformation of the gallery’s backyard into a community arts greenspace last year. It now features a performance space, seating, gardens and barrier-free accessibility to a creek.

Another important initiative was The Neighbours Project, a collaboration with two social-service organizations that welcomed people experiencing housing precarity or homelessness to engage with the RMG.

As for the future of the gallery and her work there, Gould is looking for growth. But she says growth doesn’t always mean doing more and adding more.

“We’re living in a society that moves at a pretty fast clip, so we need to able to slow down and say, ‘Okay, what’s working? Let’s do more of that,’” she emphasizes.

“Growth isn’t always about bigger and better. It’s about deepening the relationships we’ve built with the community.”