Ben Portis (December 9, 1960 – July 20, 2017) was a Canadian artist, curator, and critic working in the fields of

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic com ...

including sound art, performance, music, and

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

Biography

Portis had an MFA from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

(1989), and a BFA from

Queen's University, Canada Queen's University at Kingston, commonly known as Queen's University or simply Queen's, is a public research university in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Queen's holds more than of land throughout Ontario and owns Herstmonceux Castle in East Suss ...

(1984). He received his MA from Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies (2001) having undertaken his summer internship with the

Bronx Museum of Art The Bronx Museum of the Arts (BxMA), also called the Bronx Museum of Art or simply the Bronx Museum, is an American cultural institution located in Concourse, Bronx, New York. The museum focuses on contemporary and 20th-century works created by A ...

. He wrote extensively on

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

for publications including Parachute, Canadian Art, and Momus. From 2010 to 2013 he was curator of the

MacLaren Art Centre The MacLaren Art Centre is an art gallery and museum, located in Barrie, Ontario, Canada. It is named in honour of Maurice MacLaren, who bequeathed his Victorian home, Maple Hill, to the Barrie Gallery Project in 1989. The MacLaren Art Centre l ...

in Barrie, Ontario, curating exhibitions of the work of

Denyse Thomasos Denyse Thomasos (October 10, 1964 – July 19, 2012) was a Trinidadian-Canadian painter known for her abstract-style wall murals that conveyed themes of slavery, confinement and the story of African and Asian Diaspora. "''Hybrid Nations''" (2005) ...

, Gordon Monahan, and others. From 2002 to 2009 Portis was assistant curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where he worked on numerous exhibitions including those by

Harun Farocki Harun Farocki (9 January 1944 – 30 July 2014) was a German filmmaker, author, and lecturer in film. Early life and education Farocki was born as Harun El Usman FaroqhiMargalit Fox (3 August 2014)''New York Times''. in Neutitschein, which is n ...

Eddo Stern Eddo Stern (born 1972 in Tel Aviv) is a California-based artist and developer known for creating experimental video games, game art and machinima-based works. Stern was a founding member of the physical-computing based collective and artist-run s ...

, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude. In 2008 he collaborated with the

Images Festival The Images Festival is a yearly event devoted to independent and experimental film, video art, new media and media installation that takes place each spring in Toronto. History The Images festival was founded in 1987, originally conceived as ...

to bring the work of

Charles Atlas Charles Atlas (born Angelo Siciliano; October 30, 1892 – December 24, 1972) was an Italian-born American bodybuilder best remembered as the developer of a bodybuilding method and its associated exercise program which spawned a landmark advert ...

to Toronto. After completing his MA in New York he worked with

Lynne Cooke Lynne Cooke is an Australian-born art scholar. Since August 2014 she has been the Senior Curator, Special Projects in Modern Art, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Early life and education Born in Geelong, Australia, Cooke receive ...

at the Dia Art Center. Before undertaking his MA, Portis founded the annual No Music Festival at the artist-run

Forest City Gallery Canadian artist-run centres (ARC or ARCs) are galleries and art spaces developed by artists in Canada since the 1960s. Artist-run centre is the common term of use for artist-initiated and managed organizations in Canada. Most centres follow the not- ...

(co-founded by

Greg Curnoe Greg Curnoe (19 November 1936 – 14 November 1992) was a Canadian painter known for his role in the Canadian art movement labeled London Regionalism, which, beginning in the 1960s, made London, Ontario, an important centre for artistic produ ...

) in

London, Ontario London (pronounced ) is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, along the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. The city had a population of 422,324 according to the 2021 Canadian census. London is at the confluence of the Thames River, approximate ...

. The No Music Festival featured the work of Curnoe's group, the

Nihilist Spasm Band The Nihilist Spasm Band (NSB) is a Canadian noise band formed in 1965 in London, Ontario. The band was founded by Hugh McIntyre, John Clement, John Boyle, Bill Exley, Murray Favro, Archie Leitch, Art Pratten, and Greg Curnoe. Leitch has since ...

, and released CD box sets of recordings. He died in a road accident in 2017.

Selected curated exhibitions

* "Kent Monkman: The Triumph of Mischief", at the Glenbow Museum, February 13 to April 25, 2010 * "Kristan Horton: A Haptic Portrait of Groping Imaginations", at the

, February 28 - May 26, 2013 * "Matt Bahen: Gravity's Faith", at MacLaren Art Centre, June 8 - September 1, 2013 * "Urban Jewels: Denyse Thomasos' Big Canvases", 1993 – 1999, at MacLaren Art Centre, September 12 - November 3, 2013 * "Baleful" at Pari Nadimi Gallery, February 4 - April 2, 2016 Baleful Exhibition announcement, February 4, 2016
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References

External links

Contributor's page, Momus
Canadian art curators 1960 births 2017 deaths Road incident deaths in Canada {{Canada-artist-stub