Bryony Nainby is an Australian curator and arts leader with a focus on contemporary art and craft, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, and the role of curatorial practice in shaping cultural narratives. Over the past decade, she has held senior curatorial and directorial roles in leading public institutions, developing ambitious exhibitions and managing collections that span the full breadth of Australian art history, from colonial painting and decorative arts to contemporary installation and cross-cultural material culture.

Currently Senior Curator of Art at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT), Bryony oversees exhibitions and collection development across Australian art, Aboriginal art and material culture, and Southeast Asian art. She leads the development of the opening exhibitions for the Northern Territory Art Gallery, and has expanded MAGNT’s collections through major acquisitions, donations and newly commissioned works.

Previous leadership roles include Director of Craft Victoria, where she launched the Craft Contemporary festival and transitioned programming online during the pandemic, and Director/Senior Curator at Benalla Art Gallery, where she introduced a dynamic new program with a twenty-first century focus on exhibition programming that reconnected the regional collection with local audiences.

Bryony has curated exhibitions drawing on collections that include early colonial landscapes, mid-century abstraction, feminist printmaking, contemporary street installation, and cross-cultural material practices. Her approach is grounded in collaboration with artists and collections, aiming to create resonant, relational narratives between audiences and art through thoughtful exhibition-making.

Her research interests include curatorial methodologies, material agency and the role of collections in shaping public memory.