New Brunswick Consortium of Adjunct Curators

As New Brunswick’s officially designated art gallery, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery is the leading institution for the presentation and interpretation of the visual arts in the province, a place where ideas about contemporary art and art history are explored, and cultural synergies are created. The Gallery is committed to researching and interpreting its celebrated permanent collection, to situating the production of New Brunswick artists in national and international contexts, and to nurturing a vigorous visual arts community in the province.

To broaden the base and shape the long-range vision of its curatorial programs, as well as to stimulate dialogue and critical writing about the visual arts in the province, the Gallery has enlisted a distinguished leadership team comprised of three adjunct curators: Virgil Hammock, John Leroux, and Roslyn Rosenfeld, who bring a diversity of talent and expertise to assisting the Gallery in fulfilling its cultural purpose.

Virgil Hammock
Virgil Hammock is Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. He holds a BFA degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and a MFA from Indiana University. Professor Hammock taught at the University of Alberta and the University of Manitoba prior to coming to Mount Allison University as the Head of the Fine Arts Department in 1975.He retired from teaching in 2004.

An active art writer since 1968, he is the author of numerous books on art, has written as a newspaper and magazine critic, and is currently the Atlantic correspondent for Vie des Arts. He is a past president of the Universities Art Association of Canada and of the Canadian Section of AICA (International Association of Art Critics).Virgil’s curatorial work for the Beaverbrook Art Gallery includes Art Treasures of New Brunswick (2013), and Stephen Paints a Picture (2014), and he is currently writing a text on the history of abstract painting in Sackville and Moncton for inclusion in a New Beaverbrook publication to accompany an exhibition scheduled for this summer titled Off the Grid: Abstract Painting in New Brunswick.

John Leroux
Architect, artist and art historian John Leroux graduated from the McGill School of Architecture in 1994 and completed a Master’s degree in Canadian Art History at Concordia University in 2002, with his thesis investigating the murals of Fred Ross. John has worked at several award-winning architecture firmsin Toronto, Atlanta, Fredericton and Saint John. In 2012, he was a member of the team from Acre Architects who were selected to take part in Canada’s official entry at the 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture. A contributing columnist for the Telegraph-Journal and Canadian Architect magazine, he is also the author of seven books on visual art and architecture. He has also taught at the University of New Brunswick, St.Thomas University and the new Brunswick College of Craft & Design. His curatorial work for the Beaverbrook Art Gallery includes John Ward: Meditation – Transition (2013); Glorious Light: the stained glass of Fredericton (2011); and Building New Brunswick: an architectural history (2008). He is currently working on an exhibition focused on Bruno Bobak’s Vancouver years scheduled to open at the Gallery this autumn.

Roslyn Rosenfeld
Independent curator Roslyn Rosenfeld holds an MFA in Canadian Art History from Concordia University. Her career has been spent between work in the arts (part-time teaching in art history at UNBSJ, intern at the UNB Art Centre, three years as co-ordinator of Gallery Connexion, art reviewer for ArtsAtlantic), and many years teaching English as a Second Language for the Multicultural Association of Fredericton, as well as in China, the Czech Republic and Italy.

In 1997, she curated the exhibition Paul Edouard Bourque: Six Inventions for Confederation Centre Art Gallery and Museum, when Terry Graff was Director there. Most recently, for the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, she co-wrote with Vita Plume the curatorial essay for Charlotte Glencross, the Fabric of Her Life, and in 2006 contributed the chapter “Works on Paper” for the publication Bruno Bobak: The Full Palette. In 1999, as guest curator, and also for the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, she organized Image and Maker, which paired self-portraits of artists in the permanent collection with one of their works, drawing also from other collections. She is currently researching the work of Lucy Jarvis for a two-part exhibition at the Gallery and UNB Art Centre.