Marnie Fleming
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Marnie Fleming was raised in Windsor, Ontario. Following a master's in art history from the University of British Columbia, her career commenced in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s extension and education departments (1980–86.) Welcoming a return to Southwestern Ontario, she took up a position as curator of contemporary art (1986–91) at the London Regional Art Gallery (now Museum London) to work alongside chief curator Paddy O’Brien and London’s renowned artists.
From 1991 to her retirement in 2014, Fleming took on a new challenge as curator of contemporary art at Oakville Galleries. From the outset, this position allowed her to reimagine the role that a small museum could play not only in the local community but in the promotion of a generation of national and international artists. Landmark commissions and acquisitions during her tenure established an important narrative in Canadian art while also distinguishing Oakville Galleries as one of Canada’s most prolific visual art publishers. In 2016, Marnie Fleming was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for Outstanding Contributions. Fleming’s London tenure overlapped with many site-related projects at the Embassy Cultural House. This exciting period helped solidify her interest in site-related context awareness and participatory platforms. Among the international artists she programmed at Museum London during this time was the New York-based Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar, whose installation art ran parallel with the political and aesthetic interventions of many of those programmed at the ECH. The space/place interplay in London during this period was always part of a continuous process of dialogue, negotiation, and exchange. |
