Building Canada's Art Biennial from scratch, with Patrizia Libralato

The Brand is Female · Mar 11, 2026 · 50m

Patrizia Libralato is the founder and Executive Director of the Toronto Biennial of Art — Canada's first and only international art biennial. What started as a bold idea in 2014 has grown into a free, 90-day contemporary art event that draws audiences from across the country and puts Canadian artists on the world map.

In this episode, Patrizia shares what it really took to build cultural infrastructure from scratch — navigating skeptics, securing multi-year funding commitments, and proving herself in rooms that weren't always ready to take her seriously as a female founder. She also gets…