Andrea Carson Barker
Writer and supporter of contemporary art and design
Andrea Carson Barker is a passionate supporter of artists and designers, particularly in Toronto and Markham, where she runs INDUSTRIAL ARTS, a social enterprise leasing to creatives and providing affordable studios, a mentorship program, business development, commissioning, community-building and other opportunities for artists.
Concurrently, she has set up STEELCASE ART PROJECTS to manage a series of arts initiatives on site including a sculpture garden, a curatorial residency and other ongoing projects.
Trained as an art critic in the U.K. where she received her Masters degree in Art Criticism from City University, she founded View on Canadian Art, one of Canada’s first and most widely read culture blogs, which she published from 2005 until 2015. She was founding curator of the daily online art auction site Artbombdaily.com in 2011 in 2016 hosted a web-tv series for Akimbo TV.
Andrea continues to write and is co-founder of Untitled: A Public Art Zine, a quarterly publication. She speaks regularly on contemporary art and public art at venues including the City of Markham, Art Toronto, the Artist Project, the Gladstone Hotel and Soho House.
She is a member of the City of Toronto Public Art Commission and the acquisitions committee at the Varley Art Gallery.