2023 Vendu-Sold Selection Committee

Julie Bélisle is an art historian with a doctorate in art history, and her thesis examines the use of material culture in contemporary art. She cumulates over twenty years' experience in the museum sector in research, conservation and cultural action (Galerie de l'UQAM, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Service de la culture de la Ville de Montréal). Since 2022, she has held the position of Curator of Exhibitions at the Biosphère, Espace pour la vie museum, where she collaborates on the development of visual and performing arts programming related to environmental issues. This has led her to reflect on the dialogue between art, science and community action, as well as on the dissemination of art in the context of science museums.

Manel Benchabane lives and works in Tiohtià:ke / Montréal. She studied visual arts, art history and translation at Concordia University. She has been a curator at the Stewart Hall Art Gallery since 2015, where she has been in charge of exhibitions since 2018. Her exhibitions include Futurs imaginés (2016), Field Recordings (2017), Trames (2019), Matière, masse et poussière (2020), La mouvance des sons (2021), Petites baleines à dents - Cynthia Girard-Renard (2022) and Entre les lignes - Writing Mountains (2023). She is interested in questions relating to nature and the environment, diversity and cultural issues, heritage and feminism. In 2017, she co-founded the Club de dessin de Montréal, in which over thirty artists have participated. She is a regular contributor to various contemporary art publications and has served on various committees and juries.

Anaïs Castro is a curator and writer based in New York. Over the past years, she has curated exhibitions and projects in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, and China, including Mystic Toolkit (San Antonio, 2022 and Montreal, 2020), Ground Control (Berlin, 2019) and Over My Black Body (Montreal, 2019 and Berlin, 2018). She is one of the founding members of the curatorial collective The Department of Love, which presented projects in Shanghai (December 2018), London (June 2019) and online (2022-2023). She was part of the inaugural Shanghai Curators Lab (2018), was a Curator in Residence at the International Studios & Curatorial Practice (Brooklyn, 2021), Artpace (San Antonio, 2019), Art in General (Brooklyn, 2019), Titanik (Turku, 2017) and a Visiting Critic at BCA (Burlington, 2016). She is an editorial member of Daily Lazy and publishes regularly with different publications.

Anne Roger is an art historian with a master’s degree in philosophy and contemporary art theory from Université Paris 8. She has held numerous executive positions in public and private cultural institutions in Paris, London, Rome, and Montréal. For more than seven years, she directed exhibitions for the Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran in Montreal, and then was on the executive team at Catriona Jeffries Gallery, an internationally renowned Vancouver gallery. In 2022, she joined Giverny Capital as director of the collection, with the mission of preservation and development of the art collection, programming of exhibitions, and management of presentation venues.

Anne is also on the committee of honour of Danse Danse. Since 2020, she has been on the selection committee for the Éditions Esse auction; she has published numerous articles and exhibition reviews for the magazine.

Laurent Vernet is Director of the Galerie de l'Université de Montréal. He holds a master's degree in art history from Concordia University and a doctorate in urban studies from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique. A specialist in public art, his research focuses on the modes of production and reception of works in urban contexts. He worked for the Bureau d'art public de la Ville de Montréal from 2009 to 2018, and for the Collection Lune Rouge from 2018 to 2020. He recently curated two exhibitions featuring the work of artists working on the frontier of architecture: Ouvrages, presented at Occurrence - centre d'art et d'essai contemporains and featuring seven artists from Quebec, Ontario and Alberta, and Granche / Atelier / Ville, at UdeM, on the work of Pierre Granche (1948-1997).

Sylvette Babin holds a master’s in Open Media from Concordia University. Her art practice has led her to participate in numerous events across Canada and in around twenty European, Asian, and Latin American cities. Member of Esse magazine’s editorial committee for over twenty years, she has also been its director since 2002. She has published articles in diverse magazines, catalogues, and artist books.