Called Out

Large galleries and museums were challenged from within on equity issues in 2020. Perhaps it’s time to revisit revolutionary history.

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First, some context. To understand the turmoil in many of Canada’s larger museums this past year, go back to 1793 during the French Revolution when the king’s palace in Paris was liberated by the masses and turned into the Musée du Louvre.

This new institution made art once viewed only by the king, his courtiers and high-ranking clergy available to everyone. The Louvre was meant to be an enduring symbol of democracy and a role model for other museums.  

But over the years, elites regained control of large art museums in France, and elsewhere. Despite that, the notion of museums as democratic institutions remains. Today, in Canada, many people feel they have the right, even the duty, to remake museums in more democratic ways.

The history lesson about the French Revolution comes courtesy of Jen Budney, a former Mendel Art Gallery curator who finished her PhD in 2018 on the public value of museums. She’s now an instructor and public policy researcher at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

Museums are “where we come together and contemplate who we are,” says Budney. “That’s been the ideal of art museums. The reality is they are overwhelmingly elite institutions and the people who go to art museums are richer, whiter and better educated than the general population.”

The tension between the democratic ideal and the elite reality is at the root of many problems that erupted at Canadian museums in 2020.

At the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, staff openly rebelled against bosses thought to fall short of the democratic ideal. The boards at the three institutions engineered the departure of the disgraced monarchs. Directors Nathalie Bondil in Montreal and Mark O’Neill in Gatineau were accused of creating “toxic” workplaces for employees and, in Winnipeg, CEO John Young was accused of quashing the very human rights the institution champions.

These managerial shake-ups occurred amidst a sometimes-noisy search for equitable treatment for minorities in the workplace.

Lucy Bell, the Indigenous woman who headed the First Nations’ department at Victoria’s Royal British Columbia Museum, resigned last summer, citing racist behaviour in the workplace. An investigation was launched.

In Edmonton, two artists withdrew their works from the 2020 biennial at the Art Gallery of Alberta to protest the complete absence of Black artists in the biennials, which began in 1996. Contemporary Calgary also faced criticism from local BIPOC artists for perceived failures in how they were treated during a recent residency.

Budney notes such bursts of grassroots discontent are cyclical. The last major outburst occurred during the late 1960s and early 1970s when so-called “liberation” movements of women, gays, Blacks and others strived to revamp, decolonize and democratize many top-down institutions, including art galleries.

Senator Pat Bovey recalls that time well. “I remember annual general meetings of the Winnipeg Art Gallery in the early 1970s when artists were clamouring to get on the board,” says Bovey, a former director of that gallery and now a member of the Progressive Senate Group. “I happen to believe artists should be on the board of every art gallery.”

Bovey also believes art gallery boards must include Indigenous members and racial minorities alongside the more traditional rich, white businesspeople who are major donors themselves and know how to pry money from other wealthy pockets.

So, what will – or should – the museum of the future look like following this year of turmoil?

For one thing, expect to see galleries adding more context to exhibitions. An example is the major Rembrandt show coming to the National Gallery of Canada next summer. Two contemporary Black artists (whose names are yet to be announced) have been commissioned to create installations that will offer a different take on some of the exhibition’s themes. As well, a Black and an Indigenous historian will speak about how the Dutch in Rembrandt’s era, the 17th century, participated in the African slave trade and mistreated Indigenous people in Dutch colonies.

This contextualization of the fuller history is intended to make everyone feel welcome.

“We are an inclusive space, a safe space,” says Kitty Scott, deputy director and chief curator of the National Gallery.

The gallery’s push to become more welcoming is also supported by the senior communications manager hired last month. Denise Siele is an experienced public affairs professional, a high-profile Conservative activist and one of the most prominent Black women in Ottawa. “Denise is excited to open up the gallery to diverse audiences,” the gallery said in a Nov. 30 Tweet.

A major national study called Museums For Me, initiated by the Alberta Museums Association, is underway to help museums across the country chart a path for the future. The study is using various tools, including public opinion polls, focus groups and social media, to gather ideas. Input from racialized minorities is being sought. Results, which should be available by March, will be distributed to museums across the country.

“We want to use that data to ensure that museums are welcoming and inclusive for everyone,” says Meaghan Patterson, the association’s executive director.

The study was planned before the COVID-19 pandemic struck and before the 2020 crises over leadership and equitable representation. But those phenomena “have definitely impacted our approach,” says Patterson.

Another initiative sparked by the Black Lives Matter protests is coming from the Association of Nova Scotia Museums. A national one-day virtual forum in mid-January will let museum professionals discuss “equity, diversity and inclusion” at Canada’s museums. Anita Price, the association’s executive director, says she hopes it will start a national conversation because simply issuing a statement declaring solidarity with Black Lives Matter is not enough.

Among the various recent protest movements, such as Me Too and Idle No More, Black Lives Matter seems to have had the greatest impact on galleries.

Calgary artist and academic Justin Waddell, who is of Japanese and European descent, says he was inspired by Black Lives Matter back in May to research the participation of Black artists in Alberta’s biennials. He found none and his results were later confirmed by the Art Gallery of Alberta. Waddell subsequently withdrew his own work from the gallery’s 2020 biennial in protest. Later, Amy Malbeuf, a Métis artist from Rich Lake, Alta., also withdrew her work from the biennial.

The gallery has promised to produce a more equitable biennial next time, but Waddell, a longtime equity-seeking activist in the Calgary arts community and a tenured associate professor at the Alberta University of the Arts, does not sound optimistic. 

Ryan Hunt, executive director of the British Columbia Museums Association, says this year’s conversations about equity are “long overdue” and will likely become louder.

“People can only be silent for so long before a critical mass of voices bubble up and are heard and reflect back a lot of the injustices our sector has inflicted upon communities in Canada for hundreds of years,” says Hunt.

“A lot of people want or would advocate for the museum as it exists today to be retired in favour of a new category of socially engaged space that is more inclusive and diverse, rather than perpetuating the same colonial legacies the traditional museum does.”

Likewise, he hopes museum employees will become more vocal about toxic workplaces.

“I hope people are more willing to speak up because there is no place for injustice in the workplace.”

Budney holds similar views, saying museums must pay more attention to the demographics of their local communities and to their role as workplaces. That’s especially true, she says, for large museums, which tend to be very hierarchical, with top-down attitudes and board members whose life experiences are often much different from most Canadians.

Museum boards and managers are increasingly realizing the status quo is not sustainable. And, as the French Revolution demonstrated, monarchs who mistreat workers and ignore the public’s wishes may find themselves at the chopping block. ■ 

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