The Toronto Biennial of Artwork has chosen Allison Glenn, a intently watched curator, to arrange its fourth version, scheduled to run September to December 2026.
Over the previous 15 years, Glenn has held a sequence of high-profile biennial and institutional appointments in addition to curating main exhibitions. Amongst her most high-profile is the 2021 present “Promise, Witness, Remembrance,” which opened on the Pace Artwork Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. Devoted to the lifetime of Breonna Taylor, the exhibition featured the work of some 20 artists, together with Amy Sherald, Nari Ward, Bethany Collins, and Glenn Ligon. Glenn has additionally been a co-curator of the 2023 Counterpublic triennial in St. Louis and as a curatorial affiliate for New Orleans’s Prospect.4 triennial in 2018.
On the institutional facet, she has beforehand served as senior curator on the Public Artwork Fund in New York and affiliate curator of latest artwork at Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, the place she helped form how the museum presents outside sculpture throughout its 120-acre campus. She is at the moment the inventive director of the Shepherd, a cultural arts heart in Detroit that’s housed in a Romanesque-style church courting to the early twentieth century.
“Allison has a robust monitor file of collaborating with artists to develop bold concepts and notice transformative initiatives,” Toronto Biennial founder and govt director Patrizia Libralato mentioned in assertion. “She has targeted on artwork in public areas as a way to attach intergenerational audiences with impactful and accessible modern artwork. Her considerate method, in addition to her deep curiosity in Canada having grown up in close by Detroit, will little doubt enable her to seamlessly work with artists and companions from throughout the nation in addition to internationally to create a robust Biennial for Toronto.”
Glenn was chosen because the biennial’s 2026 curator by a six-person committee that features three previous Toronto Biennial curators Candice Hopkins, Dominique Fontaine, and Miguel A. López, in addition to Elvira Dyangani Ose, the director of the Museu d’Artwork Contemporani de Barcelona, and artists Camille Usher and Léuli Eshrāghi.
Along with her appoint, the Toronto Biennial additionally introduced the formation of a Nationwide Curatorial Advisory that can consist of 5 curators from totally different Canadian establishments and can advise Glenn. They’re David Diviney, chief curator on the Artwork Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax; Eva Respini, deputy director and director of curatorial packages on the Vancouver Artwork Gallery; Heather Igloliorte, an unbiased curator and professor of visible arts on the College of Victoria; Léuli Eshrāghi, curator of Indigenous practices on the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal; and Michelle Jacques, director of exhibitions and collections and chief curator at Remai Fashionable in Saskatoon.
In a press release, Glenn mentioned, “Toronto is likely one of the most numerous cities on the earth and is situated on the Nice Lakes waterway—a system that accommodates 20% of the world’s freshwater. This can undoubtedly impression the curatorial framework. I’m honoured to be invited to contemplate a metropolis so near dwelling, and to be taught from the huge histories of the area whereas working intently with the sensible members of the Nationwide Curatorial Advisory, enthusiastic TBA staff, and devoted companions of the 2026 Toronto Biennial of Artwork.”
