Melissa Rombout

Melissa Rombout is an independent curator and lecturer on histories of photography. She received her PhD from the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis for considering the political performativity of historical and contemporary photographic collage. Active as an advisor for arts administration and museum planning projects, Rombout has had a prolific consulting career working with public agencies, museums, libraries, and archives in Canada and internationally, including the Department of Canadian Heritage, Royal Ontario Museum, Canadian War Museum, Global Affairs Canada Visual Art Collection, City of Ottawa, and U.S. National Park Service.

In her earlier role as photo-archivist at Library and Archives Canada, Rombout specialized in researching the vast Yousuf Karsh archive and has since curated several Karsh exhibitions organized in Ottawa, London, and Canberra, including the major 2009 travelling exhibition Karsh: Image Maker, organized by the Portrait Gallery of Canada in collaboration with the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Rombout’s current research focuses on collaborative practices between artists and scientists in fostering environmental advocacy and the resurgence of “extinct” photographic technologies as medium and metaphor in addressing eco-anxiety. An avid “wild swimmer,” Rombout divides her time between the waters of Lake Ontario near Kingston and the East Coast.