Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre Named Curator of Quebec and Canadian Contemporary Art at the MMFA

The MMFA is pleased to announce the appointment of Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre to the position of Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Curator of Quebec and Canadian Contemporary Art (1945 to Today), which she will assume on June 12.

Reporting to Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Chief Curator of the MMFA, Aubre will be tasked with promoting and enriching the Museum’s collection of Quebec and Canadian art dating from 1945 onwards and for defining its development. She will also devise the future exhibition program in this area and carry out publishing, research and cultural mediation projects aimed at studying, preserving and raising the profile of Quebec and Canadian creation.

Holding a Master of Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal and a Bachelor of Fine Arts and French Literature from the University of Ottawa, Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre has been working in the cultural milieu as an art critic, independent curator and museum curator for over 12 years.

Prior to joining the MMFA, she was Curator of Contemporary Art at the Musée d’art de Joliette (since 2017), where she made her mark developing a captivating and innovative program that has put forward women artists as well as artists of diverse cultural backgrounds. She has organized some twenty exhibitions, including Kapwani Kiwanga: Sunlight by Fireside (2018), Shannon Bool: The Shape of Obus (2018), Jin-me Yoon: Living Time from Away (2019), Monique Régimbald-Zeiber: Of Works and Hours (2020), Derek Liddington: The trees weep, the mountain still, the bodies rust (2022) and Irene F. Whittome: Sublimation (2023). Her projects have drawn the interest of Quebec, Canadian and European partners, which has resulted in about twenty circulation agreements and is helping to extend the visibility of Quebec and Canadian artists beyond our borders.

In her roles as an independent curator (since 2009), Assistant Curator at the SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art (2013-2014), and Curator (2015-2016) and Artistic Co-director (2016-2017) at the Darling Foundry in Montreal, Aubre has realized numerous solo and group exhibitions for galleries, museums and art centres, such as the Centre CLARK and Diagonale, in Montreal, and the Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides, in Saint-Jérôme. She has also contributed to the writing of exhibition catalogues and been published in the journals Ciel variable and Esse Arts + Opinions. She is active in the arts community, and has served on a number of juries and hosted various lectures and roundtable discussions on artists and issues specific to contemporary practices.

The MMFA extends its heartfelt thanks to Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Fraser, who, in 2013, made it possible to create a chair dedicated to supporting exhibitions as well as acquisitions, research and education relating to the MMFA’s Quebec and Canadian contemporary art collection (from 1945 to today) in order to strengthen its renown.