Former Head Marc Mayer Decries Changes at National Gallery of Canada
Marc Mayer, former director of the National Gallery of Canada (photo courtesy National Gallery of Canada)
Marc Mayer, former director of the National Gallery of Canada, says recent changes at the Ottawa institution are "a major Canadian cultural tragedy."
Mayer, who headed the institution from 2008 to 2019, is using some of the strongest language yet to decry recent events, such as the forced departures of four senior managers, including chief curator and deputy director Kitty Scott and senior Indigenous curator Greg Hill.
"It's just so heartbreaking for me to see this because it's a bloody mess," Mayer told veteran Ottawa reporter Paul Wells, who writes independently for Substack, an American online platform. "It's an absolute mess. To put someone in charge to reinvent the National Gallery of Canada who's never worked in an art museum before ... is unconscionable."
Mayer is referring to Angela Cassie, who was named interim director after Sasha Suda left the gallery in July, three years into her five-year term, to take the top job at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Cassie had worked in increasingly senior posts at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg before coming to Ottawa last year as vice-president of strategic transformation and inclusion, a role that saw her oversee development of the gallery's new strategic plan.
Wells also reports sources as saying two unions at the gallery that represent the bulk of employees wrote to Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez in early November – before the four dismissals on Nov. 18 – expressing "alarm at the art museum's management culture."
Mayer has been posting images of historical works in the National Gallery's collection on his Instagram page for the last several days along with stories that pointedly underline the contributions of Stephen Gritt, former director of conservation and technical research, one of the four to be axed.
courtesy Instagram
"Stephen Gritt, who I promoted to Director of Conservation and Research (Dr. Suda later demoted him), is a great loss to the National Gallery," Mayer writes on Instagram. "Having the largest public collection of European old masters in Canada, you might expect it to have a decent picture conservator. Until Angela Cassie let him go the other day by abolishing his position, it had one of the finest in the world."
In one post, Mayer tells the story of Titian's 1545 painting of Daniele Barbaro, a Venetian cleric, architect and scholar. It was kept in storage because European scholars many years earlier had declared it a studio copy of the original at the Prado in Madrid. But Gritt did more research, Mayer writes, comparing it to X-rays of other Titians, eventually proving the Ottawa version was the original. He then restored the painting and it was put back on public display.
Other Mayer stories centre on Gritt's work on Dead Christ with Angels, painted around 1563 by Veronese. Bought by the National Gallery in 1925, it was damaged in the hold of a leaky ship on its journey to Canada, whereupon it was declared "a dog's breakfast," Mayer writes. Restoration had been put off for almost a century, but Gritt was game and did the work. A third story revolves around Gritt's campaign to raise money for a new frame for The Death of General Wolfe, a 1770 painting by Benjamin West.
"Stephen Gritt is known for collegiality, generosity and good humour," Mayer writes on Instagram. "Oh, and for his T-shirts. My favourite is a Wu-Tang Clan parody of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon."
Suda has declined comment on the situation in Ottawa.
