Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh are Co-Executive Director & CEO of Remai Modern.
Burns and Lundh came to Saskatoon in 2020, and have stewarded a period of record visitor numbers, acclaimed exhibitions, and significantly increased grant funding and earned revenue.
Their tenure at Remai Modern has included transformative changes such as the move to admission by donation in late 2022. This bold decision, made possible by the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation, paid off with substantial increases to visitor numbers and signaled the museum’s commitment to making art accessible to all. Since 2023, the museum has had an annual visitation around 200,000, making it most visited modern art museum per capita in Canada.
Since Burns and Lundh’s arrival, Remai Modern’s exhibition program has included major milestones including two successful partnerships with the Art Gallery of Ontario through Ken Lum: Death and Furniture (2022/23); and Denyse Thomasos: just beyond (2022/23); and a collaboration with the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, for the acclaimed exhibition Dyani White Hawk: Love Language (2025/26). They have co-curated a multi-year project with Céline Condorelli from 2022 to 2025 and Burns curated Laure Prouvost’s largest exhibition to date in North America in 2023.
Burns and Lundh also co-curated Christine Sun Kim: Oh Me Oh My, one of frieze magazine’s Top 10 Shows from Across the World in 2022 (with Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, and the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio).
In 2025, Burns and Lundh announced a three-year collaboration with Cité internationale des arts to support nine Saskatchewan artists’ attendance at their prestigious Paris residency between 2026 and 2028, uplifting not only the artists taking part but the cultural communities they return to.
Burns and Lundh have also ushered in a period of sponsorship and donor growth, including the continuation of astounding generosity from the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation. The foundation’s gifts since 2020 have included the purchase of major artworks including Nick Cave’s Spinner Forest, the feature artwork in the museum atrium, and Tranquility by Agnes Martin, a landmark acquisition that helps the museum tell a global art story that started in Saskatchewan.
In 2022, Burns and Lundh were instrumental in developing a partnership with award-winning local restaurant Hearth, a move that transformed the food and beverage offerings at the museum through in-house catering and a restaurant on the ground floor. As a result, Remai Modern is the only museum in Canada with one of Canada’s Top 100 Restaurants operating its food and beverage services.
Prior to joining Remai Modern, Burns and Lundh were the Co-Directors and Chief Curators of Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre in New Plymouth – Aotearoa New Zealand’s contemporary art museum. Burns and Lundh were also Co-Directors of the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia’s oldest independent contemporary art space, and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland, where they were curators for the 2013 Turner Prize.
Over the past decade, Burns and Lundh have curated and co-curated over 50 exhibitions and projects across North America, Europe, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand. They have worked on major projects with artists including: Gordon Bennett, Ruth Buchanan, Céline Condorelli, D Harding, Karrabing Film Collective, P Staff, Amalia Pica, Slavs and Tatars, Hito Steyerl, and Haegue Yang.
Burns earned a Master of Arts in Critical and Curatorial Studies from Columbia University, New York City in 2010. Prior to that, she completed her B.A. in Art History and Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. Lundh holds both a Bachelor and a Master of Fine Arts from Konstfack –University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden.