UNF Welcomes New Art Galleries Director Jessica Borusky

The University of North Florida welcomes cultural organizer, artist, and educator Jessica Borusky as UNF’s new galleries director and instructor of art, art history and design.

Borusky will curate the UNF Gallery of Art, Lufrano Intercultural Gallery at UNF and UNF Gallery at MOCA Jacksonville as well as collaborate with faculty for exhibits in the UNF library. 

“I am excited to bridge contemporary issues in art with an interdisciplinary, educational framework,” said Borusky. “I look forward to working with the campus and local community as well as national and international cultural producers to create connections between arts and social justice.”

While currently teaching a course on gallery practices, Borusky is actively working with the art department on designing other courses that reflect a diverse background in arts and social justice, queer-feminist art and theory, new media in art, and arts administration.

Borusky’s curatorial practice highlights static and expansive media through curatorial activism and inclusive, educational programming. Their art practice considers relationships between turn-of-the-century American Exceptionalism, contemporary individualism, and sexual-queer trauma through humorous performance, video, and installation research projects.

Borusky served as the curator for the Art in the Loop Foundation Kansas City, independently curated for the Charlotte Street Foundation, and served as the executive and artistic director for Living Arts of Tulsa. They have taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City Art Institute, University of Missouri Kansas City, and the University of Tulsa.

They have shown work at Anthony Greaney Gallery, UT Austin, Chicago Cultural Center, Feminist Media Studio Quebec, College Art Association, Boston University, UMass Boston, and Montserrat College of Art; performed in international festivals in the US, Canada, the UK, Sweden, and India; and writes for Number Inc. Magazine.

Borusky received their MFA in studio art from Tufts University and School of the Museum of Fine Arts, with a concentration in gender studies through the MIT Women’s and Gender Studies Consortium in 2013.

Read more in a Q&A with Borusky. Learn more about UNF’s art galleries.