A freelance curator, critic, researcher and teacher, Barnaby Drabble co-organised Curating Degree Zero - an international symposium on curating together with Dorothee Richter at the GAK, Bremen in 1998. As frequent collaborators the two also initiated the Curating Degree Zero Archive in 2003, established the Postgraduate Program in Curating at the University of the Arts in Zürich and guest-edited the reader Curating Critique (Revolver, 2008).
Between 1998 and 2001 he worked with the artists John Latham and Barbara Steveni documenting the history of the Artist Placement Group in preparation for the purchase of the group's archive by the Tate.
His curatorial work includes his work on New Visions, a program of contemporary art at London's National Maritime Museum (1999-2002), a series of projects with Hinrich Sachs, with whom he established the office Drabble+Sachs (2001-2006) and the independent projects I almost feel like doing it again... (Zurich, 2005), A Second Life (Bern, 2007) and Nothing to Declare (Lake Constance, 2008).
He received his PhD from the visual and cultural studies department of Edinburgh College of Art in 2010 for the thesis Stop Making Sense – the ends of curating and the beginnings of the exhibition.
He has lectured, tutored and given workshops at numerous educational institutions including Goldsmiths College London, l'Ecole supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Genève, L’Ecole du Magasin in Grenoble, the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan the Hochschule der Künste in Bern. In 2009 he became a faculty member of the Masters of Art in Public Spheres (MAPS) at L’Ecole cantonale d'Art du Valais in Sierre, Switzerland.
Besides his work with Schools and Universities he has held public lectures, lead workshops and chaired discussions in a range of international institutions including Tate Britain and the ICA in London, the Power Plant in Toronto, The Migros Museum in Zürich, INSA art space in Seoul, the Alexandria Contemporary Art Forum and the Witte de With in Rotterdam.
As a critic he has written numerous articles for catalogues and for the international art-press, most notably as a contributor to Art Monthly and Metropolis M.