Françoise Lyon has been Chair of the Board of Trustees of the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) since 2017. The mandate of this woman from the world of finance has been renewed until 2024. She speaks publicly for a whole first time on the major transformations underway at the museum, concentrated in its 2021-2026 strategic plan, adopted to decolonize the institution.
Former NGC employees and media commentators have been wanting to hear from you for months about the crisis your institution is going through, a crisis amplified with the departure of four professionals in mid-November. Why are you deciding to speak now?
What happened initially was a decision by the management team. A board of directors or a governance committee does not usually comment on the departures or hirings of people. Except that I personally didn’t like the direction in which some comments were heading for the past few days — and neither did the board.
So I wanted to say that we are aware, that each case has been presented to us, that we support the decisions made and that we support the acting director.
What comments are you talking about, those of your former employees or those of the media?
The approach taken in the media and the direction taken by some comments were unacceptable to us.
The harshest rebukes came from former director Marc Mayer, who left his post in 2019. He compared the transformation of the NGC undertaken since then to a revolution, a coup d’etat, a Canadian cultural catastrophe. How do you react to his words?
I can’t react to it directly. What I can say is that we are trying to build on what has been built over the years by the former directors, him like the others.
Mr. Mayer has not been here for four years. The world has changed so much since then, with the death of George Floyd, the #MeToo movement, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report. All organizations in our society — and not just in the arts — have been forced to adapt their ways of doing things.
The Board members and I consider that we are moving forward and amplifying the legacy of past directors with this work on justice, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.
Was your public outing ordered by the Minister of Heritage, responsible for the NGC?
I did not speak to the minister and the minister did not speak to me. It is a decision of the board of directors and of myself, personally. I’ll say it again: I thought the comments and the discussion were going in the wrong direction.
You yourself were appointed in 2017. Did your mandate involve carrying out the decolonization of the institution?
I am the president of the board of directors. It is a governance committee, not an advisory committee. When I was appointed in 2017, the world and Canadian society were very different. Many events have occurred, including the pandemic, and this requires that we do things differently. It’s a journey, decolonization. I am not an expert: like everyone else, I learn as I go. But I think it’s important to reflect and see that maybe there are better ways. Looking at our approach to the museum’s collection does not mean that we are changing everything. We do things differently, more holistically, by including other pathways.
I am a woman in finance, and when I started my career, this environment was very different: it was very difficult for women to reach executive positions or to sit on boards. We quietly managed to make our place. It’s not perfect yet, but we’re making progress.
So, far be it from me to prevent other voices from being heard, to prevent a review of ways of doing things.
What do you say to former employees, major collectors and gallery owners who fear that this transformation will be to the detriment of Western art and art history?
Any change is interpreted differently by different people. Adding the angle of decolonization to our way of doing things does not mean that we only do that now: it means that we enrich what we do – how we acquire and exhibit art – for better include ways that have been marginalized for years.
Indigenous peoples create art and have a message to share with the rest of the Canadian population. Art is at the heart of everything we do. Our exhibition on Stan Douglas at the Venice Biennale this summer received praise. We now acquire works by artists we saw less — women, people of color, Indigenous artists