2026 Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators Awarded to Casper Sutton-Fosman
The 14th annual prize has been awarded to emerging curator Casper Sutton-Fosman. Their proposed exhibition, looking in/looking through has been selected as the winning submission and will be presented at Art Gallery of Guelph from September 17, 2026 to January 3, 2027. The award was presented at a gala ceremony at Gladstone House in Toronto on March 26, 2026.
Past winners were present to help amplify the significance of the prize: Tristan Sauer (2025) and Erin Szikora (2022).
Created in 2012, the prestigious prize is awarded annually to an emerging Canadian curator. By supporting and mobilizing Canadian creative talent, Middlebrook Prize aims to inspire positive social change through creativity in an era of ongoing and unprecedented economic, environmental, and cultural challenges. Casper joins a growing cohort of leaders in Canadian visual arts now numbering 17 Middlebrook Prize winners.
Jury Response
This year’s Jury comprises:
- Erin Szikora, Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Guelph,
- Emma Hassencahl-Perley (Curator of Indigenous Art, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB,
- Lillian O’Brien Davis, Associate Curator at MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK, and
- Sandy Saad-Smith, Curator at Doris McCarthy Gallery, Toronto, ON
“Middlebrook Prize champions curators at a time in their careers when it often matters most,” says AGG’s Curator of Contemporary Art and 2022 Middlebrook Prize recipient Erin Szikora. “It provides a rare platform for emergent narratives, and the partnership with the Art Gallery of Guelph offers valuable professional mentorship. I am proud to have gone through this program and to now support Casper in developing this important project.”
Sutton-Fosman’s exhibition, looking in/looking through, explores how artists engage with and respond to the interpretive frameworks of medical radiology. Featuring work by Breanne Jeethan, Charline Dally, Miles Rufelds, and Hannah Bullock, looking in/looking through brings together practices that use medical imaging—including angiograms, MRIs, and x-rays—to examine issues of identity, embodiment, and bodily autonomy posed by the interpretation of these images.
Curator’s Biography
Casper Sutton-Fosman is a curator, artist, and academic based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. Their work centres conceptions of identity through a trans and disabled lens, questioning the fraught meanings of representation and exposure. Tracing pathways of labour, medicalization, and desire, Casper’s research foregrounds materiality and community. Casper has curated, exhibited, and held residencies in Toronto and New York, and was named InterAccess’s 2024 IA Current Emerging Curator. They hold an MFA from OCAD University and are currently a doctoral student at Concordia University in the Interdisciplinary Humanities program.
Thank You
Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators is made possible through the support of Middlebrook Social Innovation Fund at Centre Wellington Community Foundation, Musagetes Fund at Guelph Community Foundation, and private donations.
We acknowledge our Advisory Board: Sascha Hastings and Peter Poole.
