Biography
Gerald McMaster, curator, artist, author and professor, is Tier 1 Canada Research of Indigenous Visual Culture and Curatorial Practice and director of the Wapatah: Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge at OCAD University.
McMaster has 40 years of international work and expertise in contemporary art, critical theory, museology and indigenous aesthetics, working at such institutions as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and the Canadian Museum of Civilization.
He was chosen to represent Canada as curator for the Edward Poitras exhibition at the Venice Biennale (1995); in 2018 he was curator for 18 indigenous architects at the Venice Architecture Biennale. In 2010, he was the Canadian Commissioner to Biennale of Sydney; and in 2012 he was co-Artistic Director to the 18th Biennale of Sydney. In 2021, he curated Postcommodity’s most significant museum presentation to date.
He is the author of Iljuwas Bill Reid (Art Canada Institute, 2022).
He studied fine arts at the Institute of American Indian Art (Santa Fe, New Mexico) and earned a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (1977). After receiving his MA in anthropology from Carleton University, he went on to defend his doctoral dissertation The New Tribe: Critical Perspectives and Practices in Aboriginal Contemporary Art at the University of Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Theory, and Interpretation (1999).
McMaster is a nêhiyaw (Plains Cree) and a citizen of the Siksika First Nation.
SAF participation:
March Meeting 2022
