Jessica Bradley

Jessica Bradley studied English literature at Carleton University, Ottawa; art history at York University, Toronto; and communications and cultural studies at McGill University, Montreal. She began her career as a liaison officer at the Canada Council Art Bank and went on to become associate curator of contemporary art at the National Gallery of Canada (1979–87) and curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario (1995–2004). She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in contemporary Canadian art history and critical theory at the University of Ottawa and Concordia University, Montreal, and has organized several exhibitions as an independent curator. Bradley has published widely on Canadian and international contemporary art, and she co-edited, with Lesley Johnstone, SightLines: Reading Contemporary Canadian Art (Montreal: Artexte Editions, 1994). She has curated numerous exhibitions with a range of artists, including Jana Sterbak, Dominique Blain, Jin-me Yoon, Giuseppe Penone, Liz Magor, Ian Carr-Harris, Rachel Whiteread, Doris Salcedo, Jonathan Monk, Tom Dean, Miroslaw Balka, Rebecca Belmore, Yinka Shonibare, Rodney Graham, Marie-Claire Blais, Margaux Williamson, and Sandra Meigs. She organized two major exhibitions of Betty Goodwin’s work (1995, 1998) and was curator of Canada's pavilion at the Venice Biennale on three occasions (1982, 1984, 1999). Bradley directed her eponymous commercial gallery from 2005 to 2015 in Toronto. She lives in Montreal.