What’s going on at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa? For months, the world of visual arts and the employees of the institution have been plagued by doubt and concern about the many decisions that are made by senior management.
To help you dive into this complex affair, a reminder of the facts is in order!
In 2019, Marc Meyer stepped down as director of the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) after 11 years of service. He was replaced by Sasha Suda, a former curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).
His passage was marked by numerous changes and dismissals, but above all by the publication of a strategic plan intended to offer the NGC new directions until 2026. It is titled transform together. We will come back to it.
To everyone’s surprise, Sasha Suda left the NGC in September 2022 to take over as head of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She was replaced on an interim basis by Angela Cassie who held the position of Vice-President, Strategic Transformation and Inclusion at the NGC.
His appointment does not reassure anyone. On the contrary, it creates a thick fog. The four dismissals she recently carried out and which my colleague Éric Clément reported did not help matters.
An interim executive director cannot make such changes without the blessing of the board, that’s clear. Moreover, the president of the CA, Françoise Lyon, declared that the reorganization which takes place is in harmony with the approach which the institution wishes to take.
These dismissals bounced back to the office of the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, responsible for this establishment. The situation is considered “worrying”.
What is the NGC management trying to do right now? I have read the strategic plan transform together. It is a hollow-speak document replete with the words “diversity”, “inclusion” and “Indigenous art”.
But by dint of reading between the lines and talking to various sources, we realize that the NGC wishes to join the anti-colonialist movement which continues to grow everywhere on the planet and in Canada.
Last April, in the program of the annual conference of the Canadian Museums Association, one could read: “Museums were created to cement and disseminate colonial attitudes and values rooted in the suffering and exploitation of nations, communities and peoples. It used to be, but it still is today. »
The NGC, which has a “decolonization” department, wants to become more inclusive, make more room for diversity and the art of the first peoples, but it also wants to fight against persistent colonialist ideas. It’s all to his credit. But we have the right to ask, me first, how this “restructuring” is so different from the very nature of this institution.
I know the NGC well. I covered his exhibitions for a dozen years as a journalist when I was at Radio-Canada, in Ottawa. I can assure you that there is no museum that offers as much diversity to artists and art forms as this one.
To make sure, I went to consult the list of past exhibitions. Each year, since the NGC is installed in the splendid building of the architect Moshe Safdie, we find an incredible variety of subjects and artists.
Diana Nemiroff, curator at the NGC from 1984 to 2005, is one of the former employees who co-signed a letter sent on November 25 to Pablo Rodriguez asking him to be very attentive to what is happening inside the museum of which he has the responsibility.
This highly experienced observer fully agrees with me. “The NGC has always been a leader in this area. It all started a very long time ago. Looks like we’re discovering that right now. »
Diana Nemiroff is not against the more acute orientation that we are trying to give to the NGC. But she criticizes the means used to make this transformation. “We adopt methods that seem radical to me. We proceed from top to bottom rather than the other way around. This has an impact on the motivation of all staff. It is a very difficult situation. »
These chain departures are creating a huge loss of expertise. One example is Greg Hill, an aboriginal art curator of Mohawk descent, who is a leading authority in this field and who was recently fired.
But the question that we should all be asking concerns the repercussions that this orientation will have on future artistic choices. I fear drifts and cookie-cutter decisions in the name of political correctness. Besides, it has already started.
When the NGC presented the Rembrandt exhibition in the summer of 2021, works by contemporary Indigenous artists were added. What does Rembrandt have to do with this art form? Nothing, apparently. But the direction of the museum made a point of underlining “the impact of the colonial project of the Republic of the United Provinces on the indigenous and black populations at the time of Rembrandt”.
There was also the exhibition scheduled for summer 2020 from the impressive collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein which was canceled at the last minute. The management of the MBAC became aware of a report dating from 2005 which underlines that Prince Francis-Joseph II would have hired Jewish employees and that these would have been treated like slaves (unbeknownst to the prince) during the Second World War.
“Everything will now be interpreted from an anti-colonialist perspective,” says Diana Nemiroff. The aim will be to reveal all the colonialist traces in the works and in the authors of the works. It’s not a bad thing if it’s done wisely. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. We tend too much to look at the past with the eyes of today. »
The question I keep asking myself is this: if the NGC’s management is so proud to take this noble turn, why doesn’t it clearly explain it to the citizens who fund its activities?
Why doesn’t she say that the content of her exhibitions will henceforth pass through the benevolent filter of a small handful of people? Why doesn’t she recognize that our visits to the exhibition halls will be more and more didactic?
The good news in all of this is that the audio guide has a bright future ahead of it.
P.S. I requested an interview with Angela Cassie, but she was absent for “personal reasons”. I also requested an interview with Pablo Rodriguez. Laura Scaffidi, the minister’s spokesperson, wrote me essentially the same thing as my colleague Éric Clément five days ago. Too bad, I would have liked Pablo Rodriguez to tell me why two important national museums (Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau and NGC) do not seem to have a captain at the helm at the moment.