Kitty Scott, whose career as a curator of contemporary art has taken her from the National Gallery in Ottawa to the Serpentine Gallery in London, has been appointed director of Visual Arts and the Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Centre. Scott will also oversee operations for the Banff International Curatorial Institute (BICI).
Named by The Globe and Mail as one of Canada’s best-kept secrets in the arts earlier this year, Scott was curator of contemporary art at the National Gallery of Canada from 2000 to 2006. In August 2006 she was appointed chief curator of the Serpentine Gallery, one of London’s foremost contemporary arts spaces, which attracts over 750,000 visitors per year.
Scott’s career as a curator began in 1991 at the Edmonton Art Gallery. In the past two decades, she has curated exhibitions across Canada in Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Toronto, and internationally in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States. She currently serves as an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia, University of Ottawa, and York University, and as visiting faculty at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
She has worked closely with artists including Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Paul Chan, Geoffrey Farmer, and Brian Jungen. While at the National Gallery she acquired work by Francis Alÿs, Louise Bourgeois, Thomas Demand, Tacita Dean, and Stan Douglas. She has a prolific record in research, writing, and consulting.
“Kitty’s national and international perspective on contemporary visual art is a perfect fit for The Banff Centre,” says Sarah Iley, vice president, programming, at The Banff Centre. “The rich tradition of Visual Arts at The Banff Centre began nearly 75 years ago and now encompasses a complex collection of programs that include a public art gallery as well as the core studio residency programs for practicing artists and symposia for curators. As director, Kitty will lead the development of programming that meets the needs of artists in the 21st century and supports creative and critical endeavors in contemporary visual art both in a Canadian and an international context.”
Visual Arts is one of the cornerstones of programming at The Banff Centre, offering a range of self-directed and thematic residencies that attract artists from across Canada and around the world, an annual schedule of dynamic contemporary art exhibitions at the Walter Phillips Gallery that tour beyond Banff, and ongoing workshops, publications, and symposia in contemporary curatorial practice and critical studies as part of BICI.