Jim Drobnick is a curator and Professor at OCAD University, Toronto. He has published on the visual arts, performance, the senses and post-media practices in recent anthologies such as Olfactory Art and the Political (2021), Designing with Smell (2017), Food and Museums (2017). His books include the anthologies Aural Cultures (2004) and The Smell Culture Reader (2006). He is co-editor of the Journal of Curatorial Studies and co-founder of the curatorial collaborative DisplayCult.
Research interests:
Recent Curating
2025 Artists' Tarot and the Archive, Archives of Ontario, Toronto, ON.
2025 Archives by Artists, Gallery d'art UQO, Gatineau, QC.
2024 Portraits as Portals: Paintings from Art Windsor-Essex, Windsor, ON.
2023 Portraits as Portals: Paintings from the Art Gallery of Ontario, SPG Gallery, York University, Toronto, ON.
2023 Archives by Artists, Archives of Ontario, Toronto, ON. 2022 Portraits as Portals: Paintings from the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, ON. Recent Publications
2024 "Revisiting CounterPoses,” Turba: The Journal for Global Practices in Live Arts Curation, special issue on Exhibiting Liveness, 3(1), pp. 1-12 (co-author).
2024 "Inspired Experiments: Olfactory Art and Practice-Based Research," in Odor: Immaterial Sculpture, Siegen: Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, pp. 176-189 (in English and German).
2023 "Grief, Trauma, Perfume: A Conversation with Vicky Sabourin," special issue on Odeurs/Odours, Espace, 135, Fall, pp. 76-87 (appearing in English and French).
2023 "Rutherford Chang: The Record Collector as Artist-Curator," Revue musicale OICRM (Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique), 10.1, special issue on "Du disque à l'œuvre/The Recording at Work, https://revuemusicaleoicrm.org/rmo-vol10-n1/rutherford-chang/, pp. 16-35.
2023 "Shuffle," in Sound Affects, edited by Sharon Mee and Luke Robinson, New York: Bloomsbury, 31-40 (co-authored with Jennifer Fisher).
2021 "Olfactivism: Scents in the City and Beyond," in Olfactory Art and the Political in the Age of Resistance, Gwenn-Ael Lynn and Debra Riley Parr, eds., London and New York: Bloomsbury, 76-98.
2020 "Janine Antoni: Performance and Its Objects," Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, 16(4): 1-20 (co-author).
2019 "Ann Hamilton: Attending to Presence," RACAR (Revue d'art canadienne/Canadian Art Review), special issue on Stay Still: Past, Present, and Practice of the Tableau Vivant, edited by Melanie Boucher and Ersy Contogouris (co-author), 44(2): 144-164.
2019 "Reflections on Canal Grande," in Dan Mihaltianu: Canal Grande, Capital Pool and the Associated Public, catalogue essay for the Romanian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale (co-author), pp. 36-43.
2019 "Reviving the Refusé: Lenka Clayton and Jon Rubin," Journal of Curatorial Studies, 8.1: Living Display II (co-author), pp. 82-95.
2018 ”Bottles of Art, Works of Alcohol,” Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, 18(4), 54-70.
2018 ”Smell, Terrorism and Performance,” Performance Research, 23(4-5): Centenary Issue, edited by Richard Gough, et al., 350-356.
2018 "DisplayCult: Critical Curating," special issue on Qu'est-ce que le commissariat engagé?/What is Critical Curating?, edited by Marie Fraser and Alice Ming Wai Jim, RACAR (Revue d'art canadienne/Canadian Art Review), 43(2): 107 (co-author).
2018 ”Shuffling the Collection: Card Decks as Museum Interventions,” Muséologies: les cahiers d’études supérieures, special issue on La carte blanche dans les collections: une stratégie évènementielle/The Carte Blanche Approach to Collections: An Event-Driven Strategy, Geneviève Chevalier and Mélanie Boucher, eds., 9(2), 169-196 (co-author).
2018 "What the F**k?! Video in the Age of Sublime Uncertainty," in What the F**k?! Video in the Age of Sublime Uncertainty, The Curatorial Incubator, vol. 15, Toronto: Vtape, 4-6 (with Jennifer Fisher).
2017 ”Inebriationism: Alcohol, Performance, Paradox,” Performance Research, 22(6): Under the Influence, 26-42.
2017 ”Intoxicating Scenes: Alcohol and Art in the Museum,” in Food and Museums, Nina Levent and Irina D. Mihalache, eds., Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 295-313.
2017 “Nomadic Residents: Rirkrit Tiravanija, OCAD Professional Gallery,
2007,” in Mathieu Copeland, A Retrospective of Closed Exhibitions, Fribourg and London: Fri Art Kunsthalle and Koenig Books, 123-132.
