Allison Glenn to Curate a ‘Powerful’ Toronto Biennial 2026
Recognised for her 2021 Breonna Taylor exhibition, Glenn will lead the biennial in its fourth year, bringing over a decade of experience realising museum exhibitions and public commissions. Save to My Ocula
American writer and curator Allison Glenn has been appointed artistic director of the fourth Toronto Biennial of Art, set to open from September to December 2026.
The New York-based curator was selected for her contributions to public art and history working with artists to ‘develop ambitious ideas’ and ‘transformative projects’.
Glenn is currently Artistic Director at Shepherd Arts Center in Detroit. Previously, she held curatorial roles at New York’s Public Art Fund and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, and supported the realisation of New Orleans’ Prospect.4 triennial.
Her contributions include the 2021 exhibition Promise, Witness, Remembrance in Louisville centring Breonna Taylor, a Black medical worker who was shot by local police in 2020, through the work of artists like Amy Sherald, Nari Ward, Bethany Collins, and Glenn Ligon.
Glenn said she was ‘honoured’ to be invited to consider ‘a city so close to home’ and to learn from Toronto’s regional history. She singled out the city’s diversity and position on the Great Lakes, noting this geography will likely inform the curatorial framework.
She will work with a new advisory committee of five curators from Canadian institutions, appointed to provide further insight into ‘Canadian contexts and artist practices’.
The selection committee of six comprised former TBA curators Candice Hopkins, Dominique Fontaine, and Miguel A. López, museum director Elvira Dyangani Ose, and artists Camille Usher and Léuli Eshrāghi.
Glenn holds a BFA in Photography from Wayne State University in Detroit and a MA in modern art history and arts administration from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
TBA founder and CEO Patrizia Libralato said Glenn’s ‘deep interest in Canada’ will ‘create a powerful Biennial’. —[O]
Main image: Allison Glenn. Photo: Rena Young.
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