Gaëtane Verna

Art historian and arts administrator Gaëtane Verna is the Wexner Center's executive director.

From 2012 to 2022, Verna was the director and artistic director of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, Canada. Prior to this appointment, from 2006 to 2012 she was executive director and chief curator of the Musée d’art de Joliette in Québec. Verna also served as curator of the Foreman Art Gallery at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Québec, from 1998 to 2006, while also teaching in the art history department of both Bishop’s University and the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Since 1992, Verna has curated and organized exhibitions by emerging, midcareer, and established Canadian and international artists, including Terry Adkins, John Akomfrah, Vasco Araújo, Miriam Cahn, Alfredo Jaar, Alicia Henry, Kimsooja, Oswaldo Maciá, Paulo Nazareth, Mario Pfeifer, Zineb Sedira, Javier Téllez, Denyse Thomasos, Bill Viola, Franz Erhard Walther, and YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, among many others. She has also edited and contributed essays to numerous books and catalogues. Most recently, she was the curator of the Canada Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale represented by the Canadian and French multidisciplinary artist Kapwani Kiwanga.

Throughout her career, Verna has served on several boards of directors, and currently for the Franz Erhard Walter Foundation, Sobey Art Foundation, and on the advisory committee of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora. In 2017, Verna was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) by the French government to spotlight and recognize her significant contribution to furthering the arts in France and throughout the world.