The cover of Moving the Museum: Indigenous + Canadian Art at the AGO features a black-and-white photograph Jeff Thomas took of his son, Bear. The work’s title, Little White Lies, mirrors the text on the back of Bear’s T-shirt. A partner image, not included on the cover, shows the T-shirt’s flip side, which features a picture of Christopher Columbus and the words: “Founder of the New World.” It is pointed, witty and, as is so often the case with humour, truthful.
Thomas, Onondaga from Six Nations, recalls the impetus for Bear Portrait, the ongoing series he started in 1984. “Not only was I looking at my son through the viewfinder, but I was looking at myself, my father and my grandfather,” he says. “I was seeing what I didn’t see in the photographic archives – images of First Nations people in the urban landscape.”
The poignant resonance between these words and a larger reality – Indigenous artists were themselves largely invisible in galleries until far too recently – strikes close to the core of Moving the Museum, which tells how the Art Gallery of Ontario is working to raise the profile of Indigenous art or, to use a somewhat opaque term, to decolonize.
Two pages from “Moving the Museum: Indigenous + Canadian Art at the AGO.” Edited by Wanda Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik, it was published in 2023 by the Art Gallery of Ontario and Goose Lane Editions.
Edited by Wanda Nanibush, curator of Indigenous art, and Georgiana Uhlyarik, the curator of Canadian art, the 264-page book lays out how the Toronto gallery has given Indigenous art a nation-to-nation presence alongside settler art.
“The notion of sharing land and power is at the heart of the treaty relationship, and the decision to have a co-led department working collaboratively in an equal relationship is meant to reflect this,” the two curators write.
They also shifted to thematic curation rather than presenting a chronology, both empowering Indigenous conceptions of time as non-linear and giving viewers easier access to multiple histories.
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Two pages from “Moving the Museum: Indigenous + Canadian Art at the AGO.” Edited by Wanda Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik, it was published in 2023 by the Art Gallery of Ontario and Goose Lane Editions.
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Two pages from “Moving the Museum: Indigenous + Canadian Art at the AGO.” Edited by Wanda Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik, it was published in 2023 by the Art Gallery of Ontario and Goose Lane Editions.
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Two pages from “Moving the Museum: Indigenous + Canadian Art at the AGO.” Edited by Wanda Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik, it was published in 2023 by the Art Gallery of Ontario and Goose Lane Editions.
Another shift is wall texts that use Indigenous languages, mostly Anishinaabemowin, reflecting the gallery's location on Michi Saagig (Mississauga Anishinaabe) territory.
The book has plentiful and engaging visual documentation, including work by leading Indigenous artists such as Rebecca Belmore, Robert Houle and Ruth Cuthand, amongst many others, as well as artists of colour and historical settler artists.
Wanda Nanibush
Nanibush, Anishinaabe from Beausoleil First Nation on Georgian Bay, contributes an essay that reflects on her feelings of exclusion. “As someone who did not grow up in museums, I still find I struggle to belong in them today,” she says, before setting out a useful history of how Indigenous artists have fought for inclusion.
Georgiana Uhlyarik
Uhlyarik, in her essay, discusses the need to include artists who have been overlooked or undervalued. She advocates a “radical rethinking” of curatorial work. “This rethinking is not a single act: it is a relentless dismantling and ongoing resistance.” She adds a critical point: “Every undoing must be coupled with tireless rebuilding.”
Encompassing diversity is one of the biggest challenges now facing museums, which remain laden with colonial histories and practices that that reinforce longstanding biases in both obvious and subtle ways. The waters of inclusivity are largely uncharted and each institution is freighted with a range of complex issues related to the particularities of its collection, the cultural interests and financial prowess of its benefactors, and the acumen of its leadership.
Given all that is happening, Moving the Museum is a timely and important book. It provides much useful information and offers insight into museum operations and curatorial oversight. I would have liked to have seen more on racialized artists, as well as an expanded discussion of recent efforts at other museums, some of which are on choppier seas. Perhaps a more broadly focused book will come soon.
Like Columbus, who was heading for India when he washed up on populated land a hemisphere short of his destination, it’s unclear how museums will even know when they have made landfall in an inclusive future. Perhaps decolonization, like making art, is more about the voyage than the destination. ■
Moving the Museum: Indigenous + Canadian Art at the AGO, edited by Wanda Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik, Art Gallery of Ontario / Goose Lane, 2023.
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