The Belkin is pleased to announce that Melanie O’Brian has been appointed the gallery’s Associate Director/Curator beginning December 13, 2021. O’Brian will step in as Acting Director/Curator for a 12-month period, commencing January 1, 2022 while the Belkin’s Director/Curator search continues.

In collaboration with the Belkin’s curatorial team, O’Brian will establish the gallery’s program of contemporary exhibitions and associated programming, as well as assist with the development of its permanent collection and archive, with its present focus on acquiring work by women BIPOC artists. O’Brian comes to the Belkin with two decades of directorial and curatorial experience that reflects her abiding consideration of the historical, social and intellectual conditions of contemporary visual arts production, contextualizing a deep commitment to Vancouver’s cultural and intellectual practices within an international dialogue. She has worked with emerging and established artists – both Canadian and international – including Stan Douglas, Omer Fast, Marianne Nicolson, Walid Raad, Krista Belle Stewart, Hito Steyerl and Althea Thauberger, as well as co-curated Maps and Dreams with Brian Jungen.

Prior to joining the Belkin, O’Brian was Director/Curator of Simon Fraser University Art Galleries, including Audain, Teck and SFU Gallery from 2012 to 2020. She was formerly Curator at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, Director/Curator at Artspeak in Vancouver and Assistant Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery. O’Brian currently teaches curatorial studies in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at UBC and has taught at Emily Carr University and Simon Fraser University. O’Brian received her MA in Art History from the University of Chicago. She has organized exhibitions locally and internationally, edited numerous publications and written extensively for journals, catalogue and magazines.

The Belkin also takes this opportunity to sincerely thank Lorna Brown who has – as she has always done within Vancouver’s cultural community – displayed a sustained and exceptional commitment to the gallery and its staff, serving as Associate Director/Curator from July 2015 and stepping in as Acting Director/Curator from July 2018 to June 2019 and most recently from July 2019 until December 31, 2021. The Belkin has benefited greatly from Brown’s strong, consistent curatorial direction and strategic management of the gallery’s exhibitions, collections and publications over the past six and a half years. During her tenure at the Belkin, Brown was successful in acquiring and sustaining significant increases to annual funding, which supported a complete redevelopment of the Belkin website, a new collections database and online access to the collection and archive, and a renewal of the Belkin’s outward-facing presence through increased outdoor art programming and an exterior digital screen. Her leadership in implementing the Belkin’s Everything This Changes online program in response to COVID-19 allowed the Belkin to lead in a time of change and unknowns. Brown’s curatorial and published contributions – notably To Refuse/To Wait/To Sleep and the anthology Beginning with the Seventies – pushed the Belkin’s focus towards increased diversity, collaboration and community outreach, forming meaningful partnerships within and beyond the university and strengthening the Belkin as it approaches this leadership transition.