Debate Grows Over Installation at National Gallery of Canada
The November 1911 issue of MacLean’s Magazine
showing Britton B. Cooke’s article, “The Black Canadian,” next to a drawing on the opposite page, “Sunday on a Skyscraper,” by Lawren Harris.
A Toronto gallery director is speaking out in a letter to Charles Hill, former Canadian art curator at the National Gallery of Canada, questioning his recent defence of the Group of Seven, which Hill says is being defamed by a new art installation on the gallery's exterior wall.
And, the incoming director of the National Gallery of Canada, Jean-François Bélisle, said Tuesday at the inauguration of Deanna Bowen's The Black Canadians (after Cooke), that it was unfortunate that some "misinformed" people have spoken publicly about the work, although he did not name anyone.
"It's a profound work of art," Bélisle said of the Montreal-based artist's massive photomural, which presents historical images about Black history in Canada and the United States, as well as the story of her own family. "I stand with you, Deanna."
Meanwhile, the letter, from Barbara Fischer, the director of the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, says the National Gallery has long been guilty of "unconscious bias" and challenges Hill's assertion that Bowen's visual references to the Group of Seven are "guilt by association."
"I am writing to question the 'facts' that you feel you must defend, and the supposed 'historical inaccuracies' that you see in Deanna's visual argument about white supremacy," Fischer says in the letter she released to media outlets.
Part of the dispute relates to a sketch by Lawren Harris that was published next to a racist article by journalist Britton B. Cooke in a 1911 issue of MacLean's magazine. In her work, Bowen uses a picture of a Black boy that accompanies the article, as well as images of the Group of Seven, who were promoted by the gallery.
"Did Harris – who held truly uncommon social power, wealth and privilege in this country – object to his illustration appearing beside Cooke's reprehensible words?" Fischer writes. "If, with his standing, Harris had felt any concerns about his work being associated with such, would he not have expressed his disapproval?"
"Your essay and those who are now using it to glee-fully rally against the woke crowd, are trying to hide what is in plain sight: the monumental historical facts of exclusion, as well as the facts not of accidental association but of a very real historical complicity as they persisted in the cultural sector: the facts, if I am to put it kindly, of the unconscious bias of the work of the National Gallery, and of the National Gallery over most of its history," Fischer writes.
Hill's unusual move to speak out publicly has led to commentaries in several news outlets, including the National Post and Le Journal de Montréal.
Meanwhile, Hill has responded to Fischer's letter, saying that while Bowen has produced a major work about racism in Canada and raised issues that need to be made known, there are "problems" with her research. "Deanna Bowen is right," he says. "History is important. But history based on facts." He sets out his concerns, particularly pertaining to the Group of Seven, here.
Fischer commissioned Bowen to produce a new body of research to mark the 100th anniversary of Hart House at the University of Toronto in 2019.
Update Aug. 3, 2023, 4 p.m. This story has been updated to include Charles Hill's response to Barbara Fischer's letter.
