About the Author

Ray Cronin

Ray Cronin is an author and curator who lives in Elmsdale, just outside Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is a graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Bachelor of Fine Arts) and the University of Windsor (Master of Fine Arts). Born in Queens, New York, and raised in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Cronin returned to Fredericton in 1993, where he worked in literary publishing, eventually becoming a full-time writer, including as arts columnist for the Daily Gleaner (Fredericton) and Here (Saint John), as well as being an artist and freelance curator. In 2001 he moved to Halifax to assume the position of curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS), eventually becoming senior curator. From 2007 to 2015 he was the AGNS’s director and CEO.

 

Cronin is the founding curator of the Sobey Art Award, Canada’s premiere award for the visual arts, and a regular contributor to numerous Canadian and American art magazines, including Border Crossings, Canadian Art, Espace art actuel, and Sculpture. He is editor-in-chief of Billie: Visual ∙ Culture ∙ Atlantic, an online art magazine.

 

He has curated more than one hundred exhibitions, including the nationally touring Arena: The Art of Hockey; Nancy Edell: Selected Works 1980–2004; Thierry Delva; and Graeme Patterson: Woodrow. He recently curated the 2021 Windsor-Essex Triennial of Contemporary Art, and he is working on a full-career retrospective exhibition of the work of Colleen Wolstenholme for the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.

 

His online art books Alex Colville: Life & Work, Mary Pratt: Life & Work, and Maud Lewis: Life & Work were published by the Art Canada Institute in 2017, 2020, and 2021. He is the author of twelve other non-fiction books, including Gerald Ferguson: Thinking of Painting (2018), Colleen Wolstenholme: Complications (2021), and Alan Syliboy: Culture is Our Medicine (2022). He has contributed essays to more than thirty-five books and catalogues on artists including David Askevold, Nancy Edell, Tom Forrestall, John Greer, Garry Neill Kennedy, Walter Ostrom, Graeme Patterson, and Ned Pratt.