Brydon Smith

Brydon Smith (February1, 1938 July 19, 2022) was an art curator and museum administrator who had an impact on International and Canadian art history. As Assistant Director and Director of Research and Collections at the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), he helped plan and realize the new building in 1988, for which he received a Public Service Award of Merit. Smith's first exhibition was of Duncan Macpherson. He then assisted scholar Robert Welsh (1932–2000) with organizing a major survey of Piet Mondrian (Art Gallery of Ontario, 1966), in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. In 1975, he organized a survey of Donald Judd's work, accompanied by a catalogue raisonné.

In 1979, Smith was made assistant director and Director of Research and Collections at the National Gallery, where through the mid-1980s he played a key role in the planning and realization of the new National Gallery of Canada building in 1988, for which he received a Public Service Award of Merit. It was a virtual firestorm and a massive controversy. Smith followed this purchase with the acquisition of Mark Rothko's No. 16, again controversial largely due to its price.

In 1993, he requested and took a sabbatical from the gallery and when he came back, he was appointed Curator of Modern Art. Smith retired from the National Gallery in 1999. In 2004, he contributed an essay to Dan Flavin: a retrospective, organized the National Gallery of Art in Washington. In 2014, he was awarded the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.