Tobi Bruce (born 1965) has been the Director of Exhibitions and Collections and Senior Curator at the Art Gallery of Hamilton since 2015.Tobi Bruce file, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives, Canada She is a Canadian art historian who places curatorial collaboration at the centre of her practice.

Career

Bruce was born and grew up in Montreal. She received her Honours BA in Art History from Queen's University, Kingston (1989) and her MA in Canadian Art History from

Carleton University Carleton University is an English-language public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1942 as Carleton College, the institution originally operated as a private, non-denominational evening college to serve returning World ...

, Ottawa (1999). From 1991 to 1992, she served as Acting Registrar of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, then went to the Art Gallery of Hamilton (AGH), as Registrar in 1993. She was appointed Curator of Historical Art in 1999 and in 2015, Director of Exhibitions and Collections. She has focused on Canadian historical art in exhibitions ranging from biography with her show of the Canadian artist Harriet Ford (2001) to her exhibition and publication on the history of the Art Gallery of Hamilton's historical Canadian collection ''Lasting Impressions: celebrated works from the Art Gallery of Hamilton'' (2005) which she co-authored to her co-curated exhibition ''

William Kurelek William Kurelek, (March 3, 1927 – November 3, 1977) was a Canadian artist and writer. His work was influenced by his childhood on the prairies, his Ukrainian-Canadian roots, his struggles with mental illness, and his conversion to Roman Catho ...

: The Messenger'' (2011) which was the first

retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ''retrospectare'', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in medicine, software development, popu ...

of his art in a quarter century and the largest ever mounted. In the same year, she also co-curated ''The French Connection: Canadians at the Paris Salons, 1880–1900''. In 2014, after three years of research and two trips to Sweden and France, she curated her major retrospective and co-authored the book ''Into the Light: The Paintings of

William Blair Bruce William Blair Bruce (8October 185917November 1906) was a Canadian painter. He studied in France and became one of Canada's first impressionist painters. He lived most of his life in France and on the island of Gotland, Sweden, where he and his S ...

(1859–1906)'', to examine the artist from different viewpoints (indigenous included) to achieve diversity. In 2015, she co-curated ''The Artist Herself: Self-Portraits by historical Canadian women artists'' (2015) with Alicia Boutilier of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. This exhibition expanded the genre's definition by using not only the human face but other art forms to explore self-representation. Her 2021 exhibition '' Tom Thomson: The Art of Authentication'' co-curated and authored again with Boutilier, established criteria to authenticate a work of art, taking as its focus the work of Tom Thomson and exhibiting possible Thomsons and known fakes to illustrate the help authentication can provide. The exhibition was called a "rewarding experience" as an examination of authentication and forgery in art, using Tom Thomson as case in point. The show was rated one of the best exhibitions of the season by the Art Institute of Canada because it gave insight into the extensive problem-solving that museum professionals undertake in tracing authenticity. Bruce has contributed a chapter to ''Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons'' at the National Gallery of Canada (2019) and also has written entries to such exhibitions as ''Embracing Canada: Landscapes from

Krieghoff H. Krieghoff GmbH is a German manufacturer of high-end hunting and sporting firearms, based in Ulm, Germany. In North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hem ...

to the Group of Seven'', Vancouver Art Gallery (2015) and ''Uninvited, Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Movement'', McMichael Canadian Art Collection (2021). Her lectures on Canadian art include one on "Canadian Art-Making and Making Art Exhibitions" to a panel of Archivists, Librarians and Curators at the Art Libraries Society of North America 40th Annual Conference, Toronto (2012). She has been an Adjunct Lecturer in Canadian Art History at McMaster University, Hamilton, since 2016 and has served on the Board of Trustees,

Association of Art Museum Curators The Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) was founded in New York in 2001 to support the role of curators in shaping the mission of art museums in North America. History The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts was founded in 1799, ...

(2017–2020; 2020–2022).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bruce, Tobi 1965 births Living people Canadian non-fiction writers Canadian art historians Canadian women non-fiction writers Queen's University at Kingston alumni Canadian women art historians Canadian art curators People from Montreal Canadian women curators Carleton University alumni Art museum people