Chief Curator/Associate Director, Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia
Since 1996, Daina Augaitis has worked at the Vancouver Art Gallery as the Chief Curator / Associate Director where she oversees the Gallery’s exhibition and publication programs and permanent collection. Previous to this, she held positions at The Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff (1986-95); Western Front, Vancouver (1983-86); Convertible Showroom, Vancouver (1984-86); Franklin Furnace in New York (1982); and has organized exhibitions independently including at the Museum Reina Sofía and Jeu de Paume.
Augaitis holds a degree from Emily Carr College of Art and Design, Vancouver, British Columbia in Curatorial Studies; received a BFA in the Studio Program at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax; and prior to that a BES in Honours Geography from the University of Waterloo, Ontario. In the early 1980s, while at the Western Front, she worked with many Vancouver artists who have since gained international acclaim and in 1986 she co-curated Luminous Sites, a major Vancouver-wide project of Canadian video installations. While at The Banff Centre she energized the Walter Phillips Gallery’s publishing program, producing books such as Sound by Artists and Radio Rethink; worked with artists on new commissions; curated spoken word, pirate radio and performance art projects as well as numerous exhibitions; and organized thematic residencies for visual artists and curators.
In her role at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Augaitis has managed an increasingly ambitious program of exhibitions. She has curated or co-curated important exhibitions of artists as diverse as Rebecca Belmore, Song Dong, Stan Douglas, Charles Edenshaw, Zhu Jinshi, Brian Jungen, Bharti Kher, Muntadas, Gillian Wearing, Paul Wong and Ian Wallace as well as many group exhibitions.
Augaitis was named the Canadian Commissioner of the Johannesburg Biennale (1995); the Sydney Biennial (2000); the Bienal de Sao Paulo (2002); and curated the Vancouver Pavilion at the Shanghai Biennale (2012). She has edited anthologies, written numerous catalogue essays and articles, has sat on national juries and lectured internationally.