Jacqueline Bell (she/her) is an Alberta-based curator and writer whose work engages contemporary artistic practices that foreground the politics of relationality. She currently serves as Director, Walter Phillips Gallery and Collections at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. 

At Banff Centre she has organized exhibitions, projects and events including Dawn Chorus, Evensong (Bow River Valley) by Lou Sheppard (2024); Listening Devices with works by Rebecca Belmore, Janet Cardiff, Raven Chacon, Lou Sheppard and T'uy't'tanat-Cease Wyss and Anne Riley (2024–ongoing); Gather Listen Hear (2024), co-organized with Megumi Masaki and Janine Windolph; Cassils: Movement (2024), co-curated with Carol Stakenas; The Shape of an Echo: Selections from the Permanent Collection (2022); darkness is as deep as the darkness is by Rita McKeough (2020); A materialist history of contagion by Candice Lin (2019); Guidelines by Carmen Papalia with Heather Kai Smith (2019);  A distinct aggregation / A dynamic equivalent / A generous ethic of invention: Six writers respond to six sculptures, a project by Aislinn Thomas with Anna Bowen, Angela Marie Schenstead, Crystal Mowry, Laura Burke, Catherine Frazee, Nicole Kelly Westman, and Finnegan Shannon; THE CAVE by Young Joon Kwak with Marvin Astorga, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, Adrian Stimson and Kim Ye (2018); If the river ran upwards with Silvina Babich, Alana Bartol, Diane Borsato, Carolina Caycedo, Genevieve Robertson, T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss and Anne Riley (2018); Everything I Say is True by Kite (2017); and Improvise Everything with Diane Borsato, Raven Chacon, Dylan Miner, Pauline Oliveros and Amanda White (2016), co-curated with Justin Waddell.

In an acting capacity she currently oversees programming for Visual Arts residencies at Banff Centre and from spring 2021 through summer 2022 also supported this program area, notably working on the thematic residencies, Material Transformations developed with lead faculty Candice Lin; and Ecologies of Precarious Abundance: Queer Life and Natures in collaboration with lead faculty Heather Davis. More recently in 2024, she supported the Banff International Curatorial Institute residency and half-day symposia, Art, Writing, Practice, co-led by faculty Tina Campt and Macarena Gómez-Barris with guest lecturers, Saidiya Hartman and Jack Halberstam. 

Her writing, reviews or interviews have been published by Canadian Art, C Magazine, FIELD: A Journal of Socially-Engaged Criticism, PUBLIC and X-TRA: Contemporary Art Quarterly. In 2021, her interview, Thinking through the River: A Conversation with Carolina Caycedo and Genevieve Robertson was published in Outdoor School: Contemporary Environmental Art, edited by Amish Morrell and Diane Borsato (Douglas & McIntyre). She holds an MA in Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and was a participant in Banff Centre's Cultural Leadership program (2017–2018).