Glenn Alteen is a curator and writer and founding Program Director of grunt. He was cofounder of LIVE Performance Biennial (1999, 2001, 2003, 2005). His writing was recently published in The Place of Objects: The John David Lawrence Collection (VAG 2025), Other Places - Reflections on Media Art in Canada (MANO 2019), Wordless - The Performance of Rebecca Belmore (grunt 2019), Unceded Territories Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun (MOA 2016) Making Always War (Stride Gallery, 2015), Access All Areas (grunt, 2008), and Caught in the Act (YYZ Books, 2006).
Alteen has been involved in archival projects as a producer of websites including Medicine (2008), Beat Nation (2009) grunt gallery, Ruins in Process -Vancouver Art in the 60’s (2009) grunt and the Belkin Gallery at UBC, Activating The Archive 2011, Taking Advantage – The Mainstreeters Redux 2014.
As program director of grunt gallery Alteen was active in creating sustainable administration practices through the purchase of a facility (1995) and the creation of the Glenn Alteen Legacy Fund (2006), an endowment held by the Vancouver Foundation and the Blue Cabin Residency Program (2019).
In 2018 Alteen was awarded Governor General’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Contemporary Visual and Media Practice.
Daina Augaitis is Chief Curator Emerita at the Vancouver Art Gallery where she was the Chief Curator/Associate Director from 1996-2017 when she oversaw the exhibiting, collecting, publishing and interpreting activities of the museum that were produced collaboratively with a remarkable group of colleagues. In 2019-2020 she served as the institution’s Interim Director. Throughout, she held a strong belief in creating programs that positioned the local—including historical and contemporary Indigenous art—within an international context, particularly art from Asia. She was formerly Curator at Walter Phillips Gallery and Director of Visual Arts at the Banff Centre where she curated many exhibitions that extended beyond the limits of the gallery, commissioned artworks, and oversaw artist residencies. Prior to that, she held positions at Western Front (Vancouver), London Regional Art Gallery, Franklin Furnace (New York) and Convertible Showroom (Vancouver). Her exhibitions have toured nationally and internationally, and she has edited and contributed to numerous catalogues and anthologies. She has been recognized with a Governor General’s Outstanding Contribution Award in Visual and Media Art (2025), Alvin Balkind Curator’s Prize (2023), and Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2014). She is grateful to live and work on the unceded lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Jo-Anne Birnie-Danzker is a curator, scholar and former Director and CEO of the 21st and 22nd Biennale of Sydney. During her tenure as Director of Vancouver Art Gallery, Museum Villa Stuck Munich and Frye Art Museum Seattle, Birnie-Danzkercommissioned and conceived - alone and in curatorial collectives with artists, poets, scholars and citizen curators – numerous exhibitions on the history and present of the modern. Large-scale exhibitions included Shanghai Modern: 1919 – 1945 (cocurated with Ken Lum and Zheng Shengtian); Art of Tomorrow (cocurated with Brigitte Salmen and Karole Vail for Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York); and The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945–1994, curated by Okwui Enwezor (for which Birnie-Danzker served as Exhibition Director) which toured to Gropius Bau Berlin, MCA Chicago and MoMA PS1 New York. In 2021-23, she served as Advisor to the 34th and 35th Ljubljana Biennial and, in 2021, Visiting Scholar to the School of Philosophy, Fudan University Shanghai, where she led a Masterclass on Curatorial Practice. In 2025, Birnie-Danzker served as curator advisor for the monumental reinterpretation of Shanghai Modern at China Art Museum Shanghai (curator: Xiang Liping), and was nominated with Inuk artist, poet and curator, Taqralik Partridge, and Inuit Art Quarterly, for a National Magazine Award for their collaborative visual essay Qikiqtaaluk ᕿᑭᖅᑖᓗᒃ Baffin Island 1913–14.
Lorna Brown is a Vancouver-based artist, curator, writer, and editor. She is a founding member of Other Sights for Artists’ Projects; was the Director/Curator of Artspeak Gallery from 1999 to 2004, and was Acting Director/Curator at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at UBC. Brown has taught at SFU and Emily Carr University where she received an honorary doctorate of letters in 2015. Awards include the VIVA Award (1996). Her work is in the collections of the Belkin, SFU, the National Gallery of Canada, the BC Arts Council, the Surrey Art Gallery and the Canada Council Art Bank.
Since the early 1970s, artist-run centres in Canada have encouraged the emergence of hybrid practices that blur the roles of artist, curator, critic, historian, administrator and technician. Formed in this context, Hank Bull’s curatorial work has unfolded across an intersecting range of media. He has produced projects in the visual arts, music, radio, performance art, video and telecommunications. These have been supported by and integrated with critical discouse, arts administration, advocacy and the creation of new spaces for art that strive to include viewers and audience in the creative process and the construction of meaning. This work is inherently collaborative. It is a conscious curatorial intention for Bull that there be a certain confusion between his personal artistic practice and a given curatorial project. His own work may occasionally be included, or he may collaborate with another artist or group on the production of a new work, destabilizing the notion of individual authorship. As an arts administrator, he has created early career positions for other curators, including Daina Augaitis, Zainub Verjee, Sadira Rodrigues, Joni Low, Alice Ming Wai Jim, Makiko Hara and Debra Zhou. He has also offered first public exhibition opportunities for curators such as Steven Tong, Daina Warren, Liz Park and Amy Cheng.
Dr. Sara Diamond, Order of Canada, Order of Ontario is President Emerita, OCAD University, where she guided the institution through its transition to a university from 2005 – 2020, and now is University Research Chair. A computer scientist, historian, artist, curator and designer, Diamond holds deep interest in the relationships of human practices, diverse cultures, and technologies. She researches media arts history, cultural analytics, visualization, foresight, and urban planning. Relevant projects are the Canadian Cultural Data Catalogue https://www.culturaldata.ca/ and Crossing Fonds https://crossingfonds.com/ a collaborative digital platform for archives. She is a co-Director of the international Abundant Intelligences: Expanding Artificial Intelligence through Indigenous Knowledge Systems network. Diamond was a media artist through the 1980s and 2000s, including a retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada in 1992 and a curator at VIVO https://archive.vivomediaarts.com/sara-diamond/. Diamond founded the Banff New Media Institute, an interdisciplinary science, new media and industry laboratory and thinktank which seeded many research projects and digital companies. She curated new media exhibitions at Banff’s Walter Phillips Gallery and in international venues. She is Chair of the Baycrest Academy for Research and Education and the Toronto Arts Foundation boards. Recognition includesDoctor of Science, honoris causa, Simon Fraser University, and Humber College; Exceptional Woman of Excellence Women’s Economic Forum; Advancement of Diversity in STEM; two Digital Pioneer awards and Bell Canada Award for Video Art.
Karen Henry began curating in 1983 when she was invited to work on programming for Video Inn (now VIVO). Video was a new and open field of art and social documentary. This foundational period culminated in the exhibition Luminous Sites: Ten Video Installations (1986), in collaboration with Daina Augaitis. After a time of immersion in video, performance and artist-run culture as Director of the Western Front (1987-1991), she became Director/Curator of the Burnaby Art Gallery (1991-1997) and produced a survey exhibition, in collaboration with Brice MacNeil, of Glenn Lewis’s photography and performance-based practices. Her exhibitions at Burnaby focussed on the garden, the collection and contemporary art by women artists. She subsequently worked with Marian Penner Bancroft (1999) and Allyson Clay (2002) on significant exhibitions of their work. As Adjunct Curator at Presentation House Gallery (now Polygon)(1999-2002), she produced several photo and media-based exhibitions including War Zones (1999), the first of two collaborative shows with friend and mentor Karen Love. Collaboration as a way of working and support of the work of women artists are two significant threads in a practice based in media, photography and performance art. She has often addressed relationships between performance and photography in her writing. She worked as an independent curator and public art consultant from 1996-2010 and as a public art planner at the City of Vancouver from 2011-2025, helping to produce over 40 public art projects.
Helga Pakasaar is an independent contemporary art curator based in Vancouver. She was Audain Chief Curator at the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver from 2017 to 2023, and was a curator at the former Presentation House Gallery from 2003 to 2017. She held curatorial positions at the Art Gallery of Windsor from 1995 to 2001 and Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff from 1987 to 1990. Since the 1980s, she has been an independent curator, art consultant, researcher, editor, and writer. She has produced many exhibitions and publications on Canadian and international artists, site-responsive commissions, performances, public programs, and outdoor artworks. Her interest in photography, moving pictures, media art, and image culture, and their histories, focuses on current developments, often in dialogue with historical works. With a strong interest in socially-engaged, interdisciplinary practices, her exhibitions and related initiatives with local and international artists respond to global cultural discourses. Many of her projects have involved research in little-known archives and collections and have brought into focus Westcoast art histories. Her writing has been published widely and she contributes to visual art organizations in various capacities. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (1983) in Contemporary Art History from UBC and was the recipient of the Alvin Balkind Curatorial Achievement Award in 2013.
Shengtian Zheng is an artist, scholar, and curator based in Vancouver. Before 1990, he worked at the China Academy of Art as Professor and Chair of the Oil Painting Department. He was a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota and San Diego State University, Secretary of the Annie Wong Art Foundation, Founding Board Director of Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, and the Adjunct Director of the Institute of Asian Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Currently, he is the Managing Editor of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, a trustee of Asia Art Archive in America and a Research Fellow at Simon Fraser University. Zheng has organized and curated numerous exhibitions and events, and has frequently contributed to periodicals and catalogues. In 2013, Zheng Shengtian: Selected Writing on Art was published in four volumes by China Academy Press. His latest publications include Sino-Mexican Art and Cultural Exchanges in the Twentieth Century and a Chinese version. In 2011 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for curatorial work by the Vancouver Biennale. In 2013 He received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. In 2025 he was given The King Charles III Coronation Medal for his contribution to the community.
Henry Tsang is a visual, media artist and occasional curator whose research practice delves into the spatial politics of history, cultural translation, community and food, and the oft-times fraught relationships between mobility, values and desires within, between and across specific places. His projects take the form of gallery exhibitions, pop-up street food offerings, 360 video walking tours, curated dinners, and ephemeral and permanent public artworks. They employ a variety of media, including video, photography, interactive media, convivial events and language, with a particular focus on Chinook Jargon, the historic trade language of the west coast. He is the author of "White Riot: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver," which received the 2024 City of Vancouver Book Award and the Dr. Edgar Wickberg Prize for the Best Book on Chinese Canadian History.
Henry has worked with Vancouver’s Chinese Cultural Centre and artist-run centres to produce curatorial projects such as Self Not Whole: Cultural Identity and Chinese-Canadian Artists in Vancouver (1991) and Racy Sexy: Race, Culture & Sexuality (1993); and City at the End of Time: Hong Kong 1997 (1997). He is a past recipient of the VIVA Award and is an Associate Dean at Emily Carr University of Art & Design in Vancouver, Canada.
Keith Wallace has been a curator of contemporary art since 1979. From 1991 to 2001, he was Curator, then Director/Curator, at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. For seven years between 2005 and 2015, he was Associate Director/Curator at the Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. Wallace has contributed to numerous publications, among them Vancouver Anthology (1991), Whispered Art History: Twenty Years at the Western Front (1993), Utopian Territories: New Art from Cuba (1997), Action–Camera: Beijing Performance Photography (2009), Jayce Salloum: history of the present (2009), Sunil Gupta: Queer (2011), The Spaces Between: Contemporary Art from Havana (2014), Anna Wong: Traveller on Two Roads (2018), and Mary Sui Yee Wong: What Makes an Artist (2024). In 2004, he was lead organizer of InFest: International Artist Run-Culture, a conference in Vancouver that included 250 participants from 25 countries. Since 2004, Wallace has on and off served as Editor-in-Chief of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art published by Art & Collection Group Ltd., Taipei.
Paul Wong is a pioneering artist known for his innovative work in visual and media art. With a career spanning over five decades, Wong has continuously pushed the boundaries of interdisciplinary storytelling, working outside mainstream conventions making art for site-specific spaces and screens of all sizes working in film, video, sound, photography, installation, printmaking, performance and writing. He is an award winning artist and curator and founder of several artist-run groups, and organizing events, festivals, conferences and public interventions since the 1970s. Wong has produced projects throughout North America, Europe and Asia.
He is the Artistic Director of On Main Gallery and currently the curator of Enemy Alien: Tamio Wakayama Retrospective and book launching Oct 3, 2025 Vancouver Art Gallery. He was the UBC Art History and Visual Arts (AHVA) Artist in Residence in 2024/2025.
Wong received the 2005 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Art, Best Canadian Film or Video at the 2008 Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival. 2016 Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Visual Arts. In 2023 he received the Outstanding Artist Award from the Federation of Gay Games, and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Emily Car University of Art and Design (ECUAD). He received the 2024 Toronto Reel Asian Fire Horse Award.
Liane Davison has curated over 100 exhibitions on contemporary art practice from digital media through to lawn ornaments. She began curating in 1986 as Adjunct Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria before joining the Surrey Art Gallery in 1990 as its Curator and then served as its Director from 2008-2018. Her writing has been published in over 30 catalogues and her work supporting digital art and artists has been recognized internationally. In 1998 she initiated the Surrey Art Gallery’s TechLab, a unique venue dedicated to supporting the production and presentation of digital art forms, as well as artist’s residencies and exhibitions that showcased the engagement between ceramics, fibre and technology. In 2008 she also established an ongoing exhibition program of audio art. In 2010 she established in Surrey’s one of Canada’s largest permanent outdoor non-commercial projection venue, UrbanScreen, for interactive digital art.
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