Doina Popescu

Doina Popescu is the Founding Director of the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC), a public gallery and cultural destination in the heart of Ryerson University campus and downtown Toronto, where she spearheaded an international program of exhibitions, research, academic publications and archival collections in photography and related media. She has held the position of Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Ryerson University, working on special projects with the Provost and Vice President Academic. Prior to these posts, Doina served as the Deputy Director and Program Curator of the Goethe-Institut Toronto. For over 30 years she has been deeply involved with both Canadian and international artists and scholars in the visual arts, film, literature, music, cultural theory, history and philosophy. Doina’s interests intersect with the concerns of the MLC Research Centre on many fronts. For example, under her leadership, the first major exhibition presented by the RIC was Edward Burtynsky: Oil (curated by Paul Roth), followed by shows such as Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection (curated by Doina Popescu and Peggy Gale), Berenice Abbott: Photographs (curated by Gaëlle Morel, co-produced with the Jeu de Paume, Paris, France) and Human Rights Human Wrongs (curated by Mark Sealy MBE, co-produced with Autograph ABP, London, England), among many others. She is the team lead for Remembering the Real Winnie (curated by Irene Gammel and Kate Addleman-Frankel), which is on loan in Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park Pavilion Gallery (November 2016 - October 2017) and which is poised to subsequently travel internationally. Doina has published and co-published numerous multi-lingual exhibition catalogues, research based books and a professional journal. Her current research interests revolve around themes of fiction and non-fiction in the arts, archival practices and the pedagogical potential of the digital.