IBA Stage: 15th Shanghai Biennale – Kitty Scott

Shanghai Biennale 15 Chief Curator Kitty Scott. Photo Courtesy Kitty Scott.

IBA Stage: 15th Shanghai Biennale – Kitty Scott, 
April 22, 2026 – 11:00 am (EDT GMT-4)
Online

We are pleased to welcome Kitty Scott as one of the invited speakers for the upcoming IBA Stage, dedicated to the 15th Shanghai Biennale, Does the flower hear the bee?.

Kitty Scott is a leading Canadian curator, writer, and senior arts administrator whose work spans major art institutions and international exhibitions. Known for shaping contemporary art discourse through ambitious programming and sustained collaborations with artists, her practice has consistently engaged with the evolving conditions of contemporary artistic production and exhibition-making.

Scott is currently Strategic Director of Fogo Island Arts and recently served as Chief Curator of the 15th Shanghai Biennale, presented at the Power Station of Art in Shanghai. The exhibition, Does the flower hear the bee?, brought together a wide range of artistic practices to explore questions of perception, interconnection, and the more-than-human world, positioning art as a space for attunement and new forms of relation.

Over the course of her career, Scott has held key curatorial positions at major institutions. She was Curator of Contemporary Art and later Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, where she contributed to shaping the institution’s contemporary programme. She also served as the Carol and Morton Rapp Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

Moreover she has held roles such as Chief Curator at London’s Serpentine Gallery and Director of Visual Arts at The Banff Centre, where she oversaw residencies, exhibitions, and the Banff International Curatorial Institute, fostering dialogue between artists, curators, and researchers.

Scott’s curatorial projects extend across some of the most significant platforms for contemporary art. She was a core agent of dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012, co-curated the 2018 Liverpool Biennial, Beautiful world, where are you?, with Sally Tallant, and curated Geoffrey Farmer’s exhibition for the Canada Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017.

Across these roles, she has championed a wide range of contemporary artists while contributing extensively to catalogues, books, and journals, reinforcing her role as a key figure in shaping curatorial discourse today.

As part of this IBA Stage, Kitty Scott will reflect on the curatorial vision and development of the 15th Shanghai Biennale, offering insight into its conceptual framework, collaborative processes, and give us a sense of what working on “Does the flower hear the bee?” has been like.

We look forward to welcoming you on April 22 at 11:00 am (EDT GMT-4), please make sure to register through this link.