Bio

Born Lethbridge, Alberta 1946 – died Los Angeles, California 2019

Bruce Willis Ferguson was recognised internationally as an innovative curator, writer, and academic leader and was widely influential in the field of the contemporary visual arts.  His most recent executive position was as President of Otis College of Art Design, Los Angeles, from which he stepped down in March 2019. Born and educated in Canada, he lived in New York and Los Angeles while having close family links to Lethbridge and Vancouver.

Before being appointed at Otis College in June 2015, Ferguson served as Vice Chairman at the global multi-media company Louise Blouin Media. Prior to this he served for four years as Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, which followed a period as Founding Director of Arizona State University’s F.A.R. (Future Arts Research). He previously served as Dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia University from 1999. Prior to that he was President and Executive Director of the New York Academy of Art. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Kansas City Art Institute in recognition of his leadership in the arts in 2006.

While working in Phoenix, Ferguson promoted interdisciplinary and cross-cultural thinking and was responsible for the formation of the Future Arts Research project for the University of Arizona. Together with his colleagues he devised innovative research projects and commissioned outstanding performances, such as Anna Deveare Smith’s in 2009 and Elizabeth Streb’s in 2010.

An accomplished author and curator of dozens of nationally and internationally noted exhibitions, Bruce Ferguson was the founding director and first curator of the acclaimed SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico, which launched in 1995. Ferguson also curated more than 35 exhibitions for institutions such as the Winnipeg and Vancouver Art Galleries, the Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen, the Barbican Art Gallery in London, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. He also curated exhibitions within the international biennales of Sao Paulo, Sydney, Venice and Istanbul. He was recognized as having identified many important contemporary artists in the early stages of their careers, and gave important support to a number of Canadian artists as part of his work as a curator and writer, including Tony Brown, Will Gurlitz, Howard Sawchuck, Barbara Steinman and Jana Sterbak. Over the years he collaborated with many artists including Francis Alys (who referred to him as ‘an accomplice’), Klaus vom Bruch, Eric Fischl, Gerald McMaster and Kara Walker.

A prolific writer, Ferguson wrote for many art publications including 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.

Together with Reesa Greenberg and Sandy Nairne, he received a Getty Senior Research Fellowship grant in 1993 which resulted in the publication of an important anthology of essays on the theories and practices of exhibitions entitled Thinking About Exhibitions (Routledge: 1996).

Born in Lethbridge, Alberta, Bruce Ferguson received his B.A. in Art History from the University of Saskatchewan and an M.A. in Communication from McGill University in Montreal.

He is survived by his daughter Gretchen, his sister Anne Marie, his granddaughter Kesari, and his partner Vicky.