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

Bruce has recently become the director of F.A.R. (Future Arts Research) at Arizona State University in Pheonix. Other recent projects include consulting to the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto to develop long-range strategies and goals for a complete museum renovation by architect Frank Gehry.

Bruce previously served as the Dean, School of Arts at Colombia 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.

Bruce 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 also organized exhibitions in the international biennales of Sao Paulo, Sydney, Venice, and Istanbul. 

As a curator, Bruce is interested in audiences:

"There has been a whole shift in the museum world, and in the university, from the idea of supply-driven toward demand-driven programming," he says. "It used to be that curators just made exhibitions that reflected their interests. But now, increasingly, you have to ask – does anybody want it or need it? There has to be some relationship to the community and to the local."

A prolific writer, Bruce has written for art publications like Canadian Art, Art Forum, Art in America, Art + Text, Flash Art, Bomb Magazine, Art Press, Borders Crossing, 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 New York City.

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