Community
As Kingston’s oldest operating museum, Murney Tower Museum is committed to connecting its community with the military and cultural heritage of Kingston. Fulfilling our mission to stay relevant to our audiences, we offer unique projects that capture the museum’s 96-year journey and reflect on the rich, diverse and changing community experiences and impressions of Murney Tower and Kingston.
Current Projects
Murney Tower Museum
Audio Tour
As part of our strategic planning process, we conducted an extensive community consultation in 2021, which revealed a need for an engaging audio tour to enhance the museum experience and make the museum more accessible to audiences. Based on this feedback, we joined forces with Two Canes Consulting and 45 Degrees Latitude to develop an audio tour for the museum this year, which seeks to increase the museum’s accessibility by making it available to a broader range of audiences. This community project is made possible by the $9.680 grant received from the Community Foundation for Kingston and Area. The new audio tour will be available at Murney Tower Museum in the summer of 2023 and will be an invaluable step in the accessibility journey of the Murney Tower.
Murney Tower Museum acknowledges with thanks the generous contribution of the Community Foundation for Kingston and Area which made the audio tour project possible.
Past Projects
#hopeandhealing Canada by Tracey Mae-Chambers
A site specific art installation by Métis artist Tracey-Mae Chambers is on display at the Murney Tower’s gun platform between 21 May and 5 September 2022. The #hopeandhealingcanada project created consists of a series of site specific art installations across Canada. Each installation, like this one on display on our gun platform, is made using crochet, knit, and woven red yarns. This ongoing body of work is used to illustrate connections between Indigenous, Inuit, and Métis peoples with Canadians, while also addressing the decolonization of public spaces. Once dismantled, the work is returned to the artist and will be reworked and repurposed at another site somewhere else in the country. The stories gathered from each participating venue will culminate in a book and traveling exhibition.
Tracey-Mae Chambers is a Métis artist and a member of the Métis Nation of Ontario. Her family is from, and some still reside, in the traditional Métis community in Sault Ste. Marie and Penetanguishene, Ontario. She is traveling across Canada and the United States creating site specific art installations at residential school historical sites, cultural centres, museums, art galleries and other public spaces. For more information about her work, visit www.traceymae.com.
“Murney in Retrospect” Photo Contest
Spanning from December 2020 through to March 2021, “Murney in Retrospect” was the first of many community projects which were co-developed with the residents and visitors of Kingston. To build new relationships with the Kingston community and encourage engagement with Kingston’s built heritage during the age of Covid-19, the museum invited the members of the Kingston community to submit photos of themselves, their families and their pets taken inside or outside Murney Tower Museum. The project has created a unique visual photo archive, which captures the richness and breadth of community experiences and memories of the Murney Tower. This has helped us to remember and document the meanings and memories associated with the Tower and celebrate its journey and role in Kingston’s cultural landscape.
Ken'taráhkwe
In 2019, Dr. Terri-Lynn Brennan created an exhibit panel for the Murney Tower Museum sharing the Indigenous history of our space in both the Mohawk and Ojibway languages. This was the first permanent Indigenous exhibit panel of its kind in our community, produced by an Indigenous person with input from Indigenous leaders. It is important to include all voices in our community, recognizing the fuller history of Murney Point where the Tower was constructed. An accompanying audio of a Mohawk Thanksgiving address and the presentation of Indigenous languages across the panel itself have resonated with museum visitors, sharing the diversity of Kingston’s story. This important community project was made possible by the Community Foundation for Kingston and Area and City of Kingston Heritage Fund.