The National Gallery of Canada is stepping back from biennials featuring its new acquisitions of Canadian art.
The Ottawa gallery's last biennial, in 2017, featured work by Kent Monkman, Stan Douglas, Beau Dick, Susan Point, Brian Jungen as well as many other artists, and included a collateral component at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton.
The NGC's just-released schedule for the summer includes no biennial and it appears they are gone for good, the Ottawa arts magazine Artsfile.ca reported.
“There will be no biennial,” said gallery spokesperson Josee-Britanie Mallet. “It is no longer part of our programming.”
The biennial was an initiative from the gallery's former director Marc Mayer, a job now filled by Sasha Suda.
The 2017 version, delayed to coincide with Canada's 150th anniversary celebrations, was the fourth iteration. The biennial scheduled for 2019 was delayed by Mayer until 2020 but now has been cancelled.
“It is usual for a new directorship to make changes to the programming,” Mallet said.
Meanwhile, the main summer exhibition planned for the National Gallery of Canada has been mysteriously cancelled. Instead, the gallery will extend the international Indigenous exhibition Abadakone: Continuous Fire, which was to close next month.
The cancelled show is a reunion of Old Masters paintings currently or previously owned by the Prince of Liechtenstein.
“The North American tour of the exhibition is no longer taking place,” Mallet wrote. “It is not unusual for an exhibition program to change. We are not at liberty to share any additional information at this time.”
A spokesman for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., said the gallery was not participating “after recently learning of published reports regarding the historical record of Liechtenstein."
The exhibition was also to visit Seattle and Fort Worth, Texas.
The National Gallery also announced new exhibitions, including ones featuring the work of Moyra Davey, one of Canada’s most innovative photographers, and 16th-century Spanish artist Alejo Fernández.
Source: National Gallery of Canada, Artsfile.ca
