Small-scale, often rural, art spaces offer a personal and intuitive alternative to contemporary art’s usual global hegemony. Grounded in everyday experience, these hyper-focused “micro-museums,” roadside attractions, and artist-built environments, curated by individuals, small collectives, or communities rather than by larger arts institutions or provincial governments, are spaces that offer possibilities in “vernacular curation.” With a focus on folk and outsider art, found objects, and personal archives, these collections are made fully visible to visitors and operate through the vision of dedicated volunteers, artists, and curators. Through interviews with the artist-curators of a selection of these spaces along the Canadian-American East Coast, an examination is provided of how workshops, classes, consignment, and exhibitions use storytelling, intuitive assemblage of objects, and accessible materials to share cultural knowledge.

By framing these sites as examples of vernacular curation, an argument is made for a more inclusive understanding of curation—one that values creativity, regional identity, and lived experience. This project aims to better understand how these spaces function as meaningful niche archives and public art experiences. It also asks how their values might inform or challenge mainstream curatorial practices.