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 manages INDUSTRIAL ARTS, a social enterprise leasing to creatives and providing affordable studios, mentorship, business development 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 and a curatorial residency.
Trained as an art critic in the U.K. where she received her Masters degree in Art Criticism, she published View on Canadian Art, one of Canada’s first and most widely read culture blogs, from 2005 until 2015. She was founding curator of the daily online art auction site Artbombdaily.com in 2011 and in 2016 hosted a web-tv series for Akimbo TV. In 2023 Andrea co-founded Untitled: A Public Art Zine, a quarterly publication.
She is a member of the City of Toronto Public Art Commission and the acquisitions committee at the Varley Art Gallery.