Organized in partnership between the Owens Art Gallery and Struts Gallery & Faucet Media Arts Centre the Symposium of Art is intentionally non-thematic—signaled by the use of lyrics from Anne Murray’s hit ballad You Needed Me to provide the title of each year’s event, which allows for the greatest diversity of interdisciplinary investigation and inquiry.

Each year artists and a curator/critic/historian are invited for week-long residencies during which they perform, install work, broadcast, present lectures and workshops, and participate in a wealth of professional and social activities. The Symposium also embraces spontaneous interventions and performance presented on the street.The week is capped off by a colour-themed closing night cabaret of short performative works.

The symposia have been sometimes controversial but have always sought to both present contemporary practices and to offer some critical and historical contextualizing to those practices. Participants have come from across Canada and from the United States and Europe. Audiences come in large numbers from across the region and beyond. In the process, Sackville has become a centre for presentation, research and publishing on performance art and related practices.

You Put Me High Upon A Pedestal is a presentation of the Owens Art Gallery and Struts Gallery & Faucet Media Arts Centre in conjunction with CHMA Radio and Thunder & Lightning Ltd. and made possible with public support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the New Brunswick Department of Wellness, Culture and Sport.