The jury for 2008 is:

Art Gallery of Ontario

Matthew Teitelbaum

Mr. Teitelbaum is the Michael and Sonja Koerner Director, and CEO of the Art Gallery of Ontario. He was born in Toronto in 1956, the son of Ethel Teitelbaum and the late painter Mashel Teitelbaum. He holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Canadian History from Carleton University and a Master of Philosophy in Modern European Painting and Sculpture from the Courtauld Institute of Art. He has taught at Harvard and the University of Western Ontario, and has lectured across North America. He has held the following positions: curator, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; curator, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon; and curator, Contemporary Art, London Regional Art Gallery.

Mr. Teitelbaum joined the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1993 as Chief Curator and was appointed Director in 1998. During his tenure, the AGO's permanent collection has grown and its research capabilities have strengthened. Since 1993, the AGO has acquired nearly 20,000 works, including paintings by Cézanne and van Gogh, sculpture by Bernini, and works by 20th-century photographers Josef Sudek, Man Ray and Alfred Eisenstaedt.

Under his leadership, the AGO has become the central repository of works by such contemporary artists as Betty Goodwin, Paterson Ewen and Greg Curnoe, reinforcing the AGO's position as a passionate advocate for Canadian art.

In 1996 Mr. Teitelbaum spearheaded a graduate research partnership between the AGO and Queen's University, the first of its kind in Canada. This multi-year program has led to a number of other "firsts" in publications and mentoring programs. In 2001, he created the first permanent archival position in a Canadian art museum, ensuring the Gallery’s leadership role in research and study.

Matthew Teitelbaum's vision for the Art Gallery of Ontario is that it become the "imaginative centre of the city, a place that reflects its complex urban setting and a place that draws together great works of art to create an epic narrative of our world."

Bruce W. Ferguson

Bruce W. Ferguson is the former Director of Exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Ferguson is an independent curator and critic who has worked internationally for more than thirty years. "I have spent most of my professional life in one way or another facilitating artists," Ferguson says. In fact, he is recognized as having identified many of the top contemporary artists in early stages of their careers.

Ferguson joined the Art Gallery of Ontario as Director of Exhibits in 2005. He continues to work on independent projects, which include planning for a new institute for media, arts and culture soon to be announced at Arizona State University, Phoenix. Ferguson previously served as the Dean, School of Arts at Columbia University; President and Executive Director of the New York Academy of Art; and is the founding Director and first biennial curator of SITE Santa Fe, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Ferguson has curated more than 35 exhibitions for institutions such as the Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen, the Barbican Art Gallery in London, the Winnipeg and Vancouver Art Galleries in Canada, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. He has also organized exhibitions in the international biennales of Sao Paulo, Sydney, Venice, and Istanbul.

A prolific writer, Ferguson has written for art publications like Canadian Art, Art Forum, Art in America, Art + Text, Flash Art, Bomb Magazine, Art Press, Border Crossings, and Parachute. He was the curator and co-writer for Table at the Imperial, a 60 minute radio play for the CBC Radio Drama Series Playing for Keeps #7, and was awarded a Senior Canada Council Grant in Criticism for writing.

Along with Reesa Greenberg and Sandy Nairne, he received a Getty Senior Research Fellowship grant, which resulted in the publication of a seminal anthology of essays on the theories of exhibitions, titled Thinking About Exhibitions (Routledge: 1996).

Bruce received his B.A. in Art History from the University of Saskatchewan and his M.A. in Communications from McGill University in Montreal. He currently resides in Toronto and New York City.

David Moos

David Moos is Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where he most recently curated the exhibition The Shape of Colour: Excursions in Colour Field Art, 1950-2005. He holds a doctorate in art history from Columbia University, New York, and is a contributing editor to Art Papers and Art US.

Maia-Mari Sutnik

Maia-Mari Sutnik is the Curator of Photography at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), where she began developing the photography collection in 1979. She has contributed to many publications, including international editions of Contemporary Photographers and Contemporary Masterpieces, and more recently, Imaging a Shattering Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Debate. Major exhibitions curated include Gutmann, Michel Lambeth: Photographer, and Pop Photographica: Photography’s Objects in Everyday Life. Her last curatorial project, Eisenstaedt: Two Visions, was produced in conjunction with the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) exhibition Ansel Adams. Her recent essay, Deuil: New Work by Spring Hurlbut appears in Prefix Photo 15: Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto, 2007.

Aeroplan

Rupert Duchesne

Rupert Duchesne is President & CEO of Aeroplan GP and the Aeroplan Income Fund. His career has consistently demonstrated a deep commitment to the arts. An avid collector, his leadership and enthusiasm underline a vision of corporations and the arts working together to make the arts an integral and thought-provoking part of every aspect of life in Canada.

Rupert spent twelve years in strategy and investment consulting around the world before he joined Air Canada in 1996 as Vice President, Marketing, and in 1999 was promoted to Senior Vice President, International. During that year, he served on the Executive team which defeated the Onex takeover bid, and was appointed Chief Integration Executive, overseeing the integration of Canadian Airlines and Air Canada. He was appointed to his current position at Aeroplan in August 2000, where he was responsible for creating the business model, building the company and leading the IPO of the fund in 2005.

Rupert holds an MBA from the University of Manchester and a Bachelor Honors degree in Pharmacology from the University of Leeds, both in England.

He is Vice President of the Board of Trustees of the Art Gallery of Ontario, where he serves as a member of the Executive Committee, and chairs the Public Affairs Committee. He is also a member of the Boards of the NeuroScience Canada Partnership and NeuroScience Canada Foundation. He serves on the Board of Toronto’s Luminato Festival. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc.

Alden Hadwen

Alden Hadwen is Manager of Community Investments at Aeroplan. She has always been close to the arts and has the fortunate position of representing Aeroplan as liaison to The Grange Prize. She has worked closely with Bruce Ferguson and the AGO team to realize the details of this unique partnership, which has a goal of encouraging an ongoing dialogue and awareness of contemporary photography and the artists who create it.

A poet with an honours degree in creative writing from Concordia University, her work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies, as well as a poem in the book of photography titled Industrial Sites by Robert Bourdeau. A first book of her poetry was published in Autumn 2007. Alden has trained in fine art, including a scholarship to the Edinburgh Festival in 1972. She worked on special projects at Air Canada from 1996 until 2002, when she joined Aeroplan.

Alden’s portfolio at Aeroplan includes managing the company’s Community Investment initiatives. She wrote the company’s Code of Ethics and leads the overall approach to Corporate Social Responsibility, involving employees at all levels and also supporting external Aeroplan Charitable Pooling projects in communities across Canada. These projects include small arts organizations in dance and theatre as well as the visual arts, and local initiatives with a humanitarian, ecological or community focus. Alden is also responsible for creating Beyond Miles, the Aeroplan on-line member donation program that supports NGOs such as Engineers Without Borders–Canada, Medecins Sans Frontières–Canada, Veterinarians Without Borders–Canada, and the Stephen Lewis Foundation, to name a few. Her work with these organizations is ongoing.