Melanie O'Brian (born 1973) is a Canadian curator of contemporary art and writer based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

At The Power Plant, she curated solo exhibitions of work by Kerry Tribe, Stan Douglas, Omer Fast, and Simon Fujiwara, and group exhibitions that included the work of Abbas Akhavan, Karen Cytter, Geoffrey Farmer, Claire Fontaine, Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, Oscar Tuazon, Ulla von Brandenburg, and Franz West, among others.

[2] At SFU Galleries, she curated solo exhibitions of work by Hito Steyerl, Walid Raad, Raymond Boisjoly, Marianne Nicolson, Andreas Bunte[3] and Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens,[4] as well as co-curated group exhibitions such as Maps and Dreams with Brian Jungen, This Now, More Than Ever with Steve Collis,[5] and Geometry of Knowing and Through a Window: Visual Art and SFU 1965-2015 with Amy Kazymerchyk.

In 2022, she was appointed the associate director and curator of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at UBC.

She will also serve as acting director for 2022 as Belkin continues to search for a permanent replacement for Scott Watson, who retired in 2021.