FOCUS CURATOR ANNOUNCED

Dr. Zoé Whitley is the Focus Curator for Art Toronto 2025

We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Zoé Whitley will lead the 26th edition of Canada’s art fair as the Focus Exhibition curator.

In her own words, “I am perpetually excited by the contemporary artistic practices and creative thinking nurtured in Canada, reverberating globally. Whether serving on the Sobey Art Award jury in 2024—a particular privilege as the only non-artist juror—and working closely with artists such as Lotus L. Kang and Abbas Akhavan abroad, it's thrilling to be able to work with Art Toronto on an international showcase that brings together Canadian artists and voices from across the globe within the context of multicultural Toronto."

Introducing Dr. Zoé Whitley

Dr. Zoé Whitley is an award-winning curator and writer based in London, UK. American-born, she has been Director of the nonprofit Chisenhale Gallery (2020-2025), having worked as a museum curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2003–13); Tate (2013–19); and Hayward Gallery (2019), all in London. In 2019, she curated Cathy Wilkes’s British Council commission in the British Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. As Curator of International Art at Tate Modern (2016–19), she co-curated the acclaimed exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power. Whitley also lectures internationally on visual culture and is the author of the monograph on Barkley L. Hendricks, solid!. She serves as a trustee of the Teiger Foundation, New York and Sir John Soane's Museum, London. She earned her doctorate in contemporary art at the University of Central Lancashire, supervised by artist Lubaina Himid.