Felicity Fenner

Associate Professor at UNSW Art & Design, UNSW

Felicity Fenner is a curator, writer and renowned authority on public art. She is Chair of the City of Sydney’s Public Art Advisory Panel, of which she has been a member since 2007. Her recent book about the role of public art in urban spaces across the globe, titled Running the City: why public art matters, was published in 2017 by NewSouth Publishing.

Prior to her appointment as Associate Professor at UNSW Art & Design, Felicity was the inaugural Director of UNSW Galleries, Sydney (2013-2018), her dynamic program of international contemporary art swiftly establishing the new Galleries as a leading centre for art and ideas.

In 2011–2015 she was a lead researcher on Curating Cities, a major Australian Research Council project that investigated the world’s best practice eco-sustainable public art and was delivered in partnership with the City of Sydney, resulting in a comprehensive and continuing public art database.

Felicity regularly publishes book chapters, catalogue essays and journal articles. She is a Contributing Editor of ArtAsiaPacific, and writes regularly for leading art journals including Art in America, Art & Australia, Artlink and the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Art. She is currently writing a book on curatorial aspects of the Biennale of Sydney since it began in 1973.

Currently co-curator of Visual Arts for the Perth Festival (2017–2019), Felicity has curated more than 40 exhibitions of Australian and international art, including for the 2009 Venice Biennale and the 2013 International Symposium of Electronic Arts. Other projects include Michael Nyman: CineOpera, staged inside the brickworks at Sydney Park in 2011, the 2008 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, and Primavera 2005 at the MCA Sydney. In 2013 Felicity co-curated Making Change for the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, which was a finalist in the Australian Arts in Asia Awards; and in 2014 she brought to Australia Richard Mosse’s The Enclave, named by ABC Arts as one of Australia’s top three visual arts presentations that year. Her international new media exhibition, People Like Us, is currently touring to 15 public galleries across Australia (2016-2019).