On June 7, the very day of the official announcement of the appointment of Jean-François Bélisle as head of the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), the New York Times announced the death of museum directors online. The old-fashioned directors, we agree — historians of art or omniscient civilizations — now replaced by helmsmen capable of assuming a much more complex and delicate role.
In addition to great intellectual qualities and, if possible, a well-filled international dance card to maintain good relations with lending museums, the position requires decolonizing its institution; to manage new generations of employees allergic to authority; negotiate with JEDI pressure groups (justice, equality, diversity, inclusion); to go green; to coax major collectors and donors; deal with budget cuts; master communications and public relations. And there are still some left.
“It’s not just about the art anymore: today’s museum leaders increasingly have to grapple with staff revolts and calls to return looted artworks while navigating social unrest and controversies over social justice,” summed up the article in the major New York daily.
This implacable truth goes beyond the American border.
Jean-François Bélisle read the synthesis of the New York Times, which basically confirmed what he knew and what was in store for him. “You don’t think about the skills required for this position every day, but when I saw them displayed in the NYTI remembered what a diversified job it is,” says Mr. Bélisle, that The duty met two weeks after his appointment, the day before the national holiday. “It’s even a bit strange in terms of mandate and responsibilities. »
Jean-François Bélisle is also the first to admit that the step is high, very high, to go from the small Musée d’art de Joliette, which he has directed since 2016, to the largest museum in Canada, which he will lead from of July 17. But like the selection committee, which chose him unanimously, like the columnists and specialists in the sector, who approve of his appointment announced in mid-June, he knows he has everything it takes to step over it. .
“All the praise I’ve received scares me a little, because I feel like I’m being portrayed in a way that’s a little too idealized,” says Mr. Bélisle. “Falling off the pedestal would be easy, and that stresses me out. The height of the step does not stress me out. There are hundreds of employees in Ottawa and about fifty in Joliette. But I don’t manage the fifty and I won’t manage the hundreds. The structure remains the same. There are about ten departments, and we will work together. »
The world of museums in crisis
It will therefore be quite a contrast, because if the museum world is undergoing a major transformation, the NGC has badly negotiated its own transformation since the turn of the decade. The former director pushed through a new strategic plan that led to dozens of layoffs and resignations amid tensions with major collectors.
History museums have taken the turn of decolonization for years, often without creating a storm. The transformation in this sense of the NGC’s institutional neighbour, the Canadian Museum of History, has gone almost without a hitch. But the NGC has imploded under the pressure of diversity and the effects are inside and outside its walls.
Without revealing his concrete and complete plans (“it is far too early”), the new director says he is betting on the depersonalization of the debates to reunite his new establishment. “We have to refocus on the work, on the work of the artists. Interesting leads come from there. They don’t come from the commissioner, the curator, the director,” he says.
He adds that art museums — and not just their management — have long been closed in on themselves while working over several interconnected times. The works are preserved there if possible for eternity; curators prepare exhibitions for years; the mediation receives visitors on a day-to-day basis. “We must not lose sight of the fact that we are all working for the same goal. »
Jean-François Bélisle’s parents were diplomats, and the new director of the NGC seems to have learned some lessons from this world of compromise. After high school in the United States, he thought about going into architecture, but an elective course in art history taken during a preparatory year in engineering at Concordia University changed his life. “The course was given by Janice Anderson. She made me understand that the history of art offers — and I am caricaturing — a sort of comic strip of history. It’s a way of understanding a whole era through artistic creations. »
If you continue to exhibit only white male artists, it does not correspond to what we live. You have to understand that there are a lack of voices around the table and make room for them.
Ours is no exception, and art changes because society changes. The Oscar ceremonies are becoming places of symbolic reparation for the sociopolitical tensions of the #MeToo and post-George Floyd era in the United States. All places of culture somehow take the turn of diversity.
“It’s the continuation of this idea of being a witness of one’s time. We are in the process of choosing what will be retained from our time,” explains director Bélisle. “If you continue to exhibit only white male artists, that does not correspond to what we are experiencing. You have to understand that there are a lack of voices around the table and make room for them. It’s not a demand specific to the art world, it’s a demand from society as a whole, and it was time for the art world to realize it. »
Still Riopelle
When Director Bélisle returns to work in a few days, and for the next few months, he will be able to see Montreal artist Deanna Bowen’s installation dealing with “colonial heritage” to “reject history racist of Canada”. The seventeen large panels hanging outside the museum denounce white supremacy with a panorama of powerful men, including John A. Macdonald, Wilfrid Laurier, Mackenzie King and… the Group of Seven.
The decision to celebrate the 100e Riopelle’s birthday in Ottawa (another white man) has already created tension at the NGC. The exhibition is maintained for the end of the year and the new director cannot judge it in detail. He recalls all the same that he himself presented the exhibition A place of memory in Joliette, which compares the works of Riopelle with recent productions by foreign contemporary artists, all women. She is filming in Baie-Saint-Paul at the moment.
“This exhibition establishes a dialogue with a modern monument,” explains Mr. Bélisle. “It is happening, and I am convinced that we must continue to do so to enrich the discussions. Museums need to recognize their bias and the biases of artists in their time. If we don’t do that, we move forward blindly without learning anything. »
He gives another example, this time concerning the permanent and encyclopedic collection of the Musée d’art de Joliette, which has 9,000 works covering 5,000 years of art history. The museum has activated the rotation of works in the room and has above all chosen to “parasiticize” them (the term is from Mr. Bélisle) with contemporary creations. The exhibition Views in dialogue presented until May 2021 video comments by Indigenous people on the clichéd representations of their ancestors by Alfred Laliberté or Louis-Philippe Hébert.
J.-F. Bélisle, director of museums 2.0, admits that he is not a fan of old-fashioned star exhibitions, which often only served to attract the public in spades with well-known works (the Impressionists, Egypt pharaonic, etc.). “A new Degas exhibition exactly like the one made 40 years ago, what’s the point? For what ? To attract two million visitors? I would rather bring two million visitors with another proposal. Another form of blockbuster, so, yes, maybe. »
He also believes that Canada — and the NGC in particular — can provide examples of healthy decolonization to the rest of the global museum community. “Our level of thinking, research and discussion is very advanced on these issues. We have an intelligent, interesting and important point of view, which I think would be welcome on the international scene. »