Index/Jessica Bradley
+ 02 — Jessica Bradley
Jessica Bradley
Curator, writer and dealer — a four-decade reading of contemporary art at Canada's leading institutions and beyond.
+ Biography
Jessica Bradley was born in Birmingham, United Kingdom, in 1948, and emigrated to Canada with her family in 1951, settling first in Victoria and then in Ottawa. She read English Literature and Art History at Carleton University (B.A., 1971), studied French language and culture at the Université de Montpellier, took an Honours year in Art History at York University, and later completed an M.A. in Communications and Cultural Studies at McGill (1991) and doctoral study in Humanities at Concordia (1993–1995).
Across more than twenty-five years she built collections of contemporary Canadian and international art at two of the country's premier institutions, earning a respected standing among collectors, artists, gallery directors, critics and curators — and an unusually broad command of the current context for artistic practice in all media, here and internationally.
+ Institutional career
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Associate Curator of Contemporary Art. Earlier roles at the Gallery from 1972, including liaison and special projects officer for the Art Bank of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Independent curator & critic, Montreal
Freelance curatorial work and criticism.
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Curator of Contemporary Art, responsible for acquisitions and for exhibitions of Canadian and international artists. Initiated the "Present Tense" series of project exhibitions.
Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, Toronto
Founder and director of the gallery, later known as Jessica Bradley Gallery.
Independent practice, Montreal
Curator and contemporary art consultant.
+ Venice Biennale
Commissioner for Canada's representation at the Venice Biennale in 1982, 1984 and 1999.
+ Teaching
Undergraduate and graduate courses in art history and critical theory at the University of Ottawa, Concordia, OCAD University, and as adjunct faculty in Fine Arts at York University.
+ Juries & awards
Juries and committees including the Toronto Arts Awards, the Gershon Iskowitz Prize and the Sobey Art Award; Canada Council grants in the Curator/Critics category and the OAAG curatorial writing award (1996).
+ Selected exhibitions & writing
Bradley's curatorial work ranges across Canadian and international art. She co-organized the landmark exhibition Songs of Experience with Diana Nemiroff, and at the AGO organized Displacements: Miroslaw Balka, Doris Salcedo and Rachel Whiteread (1997) and Rodney Graham: A Little Thought (2004), the latter produced with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Vancouver Art Gallery.
As a writer she co-edited the anthology Sight Lines: Reading Contemporary Canadian Art with Lesley Johnstone (Éditions Artexte, 1994), and is the author of The Art of Betty Goodwin (Art Canada Institute, 2024), alongside numerous catalogue essays. A fuller account is gathered under Writing & Press.