2024 Nominators

Kanika Anand is the Senior Curator at Contemporary Calgary, Canada, and Curatorial Team Member of the Indian Ceramics Triennale. She holds a Master’s degree in Art History from the National Museum Institute, India, has been curatorial fellow at the Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France (2012-13) and fellow at the Global Cultural Leadership Programme, European Cultural Foundation (2018). Her curatorial approach focuses on the socio-cultural and its relevance to place-making and the construction of identity.

Nominated Shellie Zhang.

Shannon Anderson currently serves as Senior Curator for the Art Gallery of Mississauga, and has previously held the position of Art Curator for the Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital. As an independent curator and writer of contemporary art, she has generated exhibitions for galleries across Canada. She has written essays for publications produced by numerous art galleries, and has contributed texts to Art Papers, Azure, Border Crossings, Canadian Art, CMagazine, Carousel, Designlines, EyeMazing Amsterdam and The Globe and Mail. Anderson earned an honours BA in the joint Art and Art History Program at Sheridan and the University of Toronto, and an MA in Art History at Concordia University.

Nominated Sara Angelucci.

Tatum Dooley is a writer and founder of Art Forecast. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Architectural Digest, Border Crossings, Canadian Art, Editorial Magazine, Garage Magazine, the Globe & Mail, The Walrus, Lapham’s Quarterly, and Vogue. She has written exhibition texts for artists worldwide. Tatum has a BA in Arts & Contemporary Studies and an MA in Literature of Modernity from Toronto Metropolitan University. She currently sits on the Curatorial Committee of SNAP, a photography auction in support of AIDS Committee of Toronto. Previously, she was Co-Chair of Salon 44, Gallery 44 annual fundraiser.

Nominated Sara Cwynar.

Mireille Eagan is Curator of Contemporary Art at The Rooms. Previously, she was curator at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, PEI, where she was a founding member of that province’s artist-run collective This Town Is Small. Eagan has curated more than 100 exhibitions, individually or as co-curator, including the nationally touring retrospective Mary Pratt and Mary Pratt: This Little Painting at the National Gallery of Canada (that institution’s first solo exhibition of an Atlantic Canadian woman artist), as well as the Terra Nova Art Foundation’s Collateral Project at the 55th Venice Biennale. She currently holds the position of President of the Atlantic Provinces Art Gallery Association. Eagan has written for publications including Border Crossings, C Magazine, Canadian Art, The Globe and Mail, and Inuit Art Quarterly and has lectured nationally and internationally.

Nominated Barry Pottle.

Henry Heng Lu is a curator, writer, artist, and public art consultant based in Vancouver. Most recently, he has been appointed the new Executive Director for the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. Prior to that, he served as the inaugural Gallery Manager at the Chinese Canadian Museum, Vancouver, and the Executive Director/Curator at Centre A. He is co-founder and curator of Call Again, a mobile initiative/collective committed to creating space for contemporary diasporic artistic practices within Canada and beyond through exhibitions, screenings, and roundtables. He has served on various juries for arts councils, as well as national and international prizes. Lu holds a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto.

Nominated Chih-Chien Wang.

Former Director and CEO of the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) from 2009-2019, Marc Mayer has held senior positions in four other museums in Canada and the United States. Before his museum work, he promoted contemporary Canadian art in New York and in Paris. A seasoned writer, curator, lecturer on art, Mayer has organized dozens of exhibitions over the years, notably in Ekphrasis, his Substack newsletter. Major exhibitions include Edward Burtynsky: Extraction/Abstraction, 2024, at the Saatchi Gallery in London, UK;, and the Thomas Nozkowski survey, 2010, both for the NGC; the Jean-Michel Basquiat retrospective, 2005, and Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, 2004, both for the Brooklyn Museum. His book Art in Canada, 2017. Marc Mayer is currently Director of Arsenal Contemporary, NY.

Nominated Nicholas Baier.

Zoë Tousignant is Curator, Photography, at the McCord Stewart Museum. She holds a PhD in Art History from Concordia University and an MA in Museum Studies from the University of Leeds, UK. Her research focuses on the production and reception of photographic culture in Quebec and Canada, from the nineteenth century to today. Her curatorial projects have included close collaborations with photographers Serge Clément, Carlos Ferrand, Marisa Portolese, Gabor Szilasi and the members of the Disraeli collective. Her many publications include the book Gabor Szilasi: The Art World in Montreal, 1960-1980 (McCord Stewart Museum and McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019) and contributions to the anthology A World History of Women Photographers (Thames & Hudson, 2022).

Nominated Clara Gutsche.

Meeka Walsh is a writer, editor and critic who has been the Editor of Border Crossings magazine since 1993. She has contributed catalogue essays and articles on a wide range of Canadian and American artists, including Mel Bochner, Richard, Margaux Williamson and Paul P. Some of the photographers about whom she has written include Erin Shirreff, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Stephen Waddell, Robert Frank, Ken Lum, Sarah Anne Johnson and Nan Goldin. She has been a member of a number of cultural Boards including as Trustee of the National Gallery of Canada where she chaired the CMCP Advisory Committee and on the Acquisitions Committee, was a Member of the Executive of Plug In ICA, and an inaugural member of the Canadian Artists and Producers Professional Relations Tribunal in Ottawa.

Nominated Thaddeus Holownia.