National Gallery director not interested in decolonization
National Gallery of Canada (courtesy NGC)
Unlike his predecessor, Jean-Francois Bélisle, National Gallery of Canada director, says he is not comfortable with the concept of “decolonizing” art museums.
“A gallery is a gallery,” Bélisle said in an interview with Paul Wells, an Ottawa-based independent political columnist and podcaster. “It comes from a colonial past. We’re not going to change that. I think there’s a way to make our society better, make our galleries better, which is the part where I’m concerned — is making the gallery better. But what is decolonization? What would it entail? I’m not even sure I’m interested in thinking about it. I’m interested in building something, not de-building it.”
The last full-time director of the gallery, Sasha Suda, attempted to remake the gallery into a “decolonized” institution that was more open to the art, experiences and thinking of Indigenous, Black and other minorities. That involved firing curators and retooling exhibitions.
One manifestation of Suda’s decolonization drive is a mural by Montreal Black artist Deanna Bowen containing archival photographs of prominent Canadians, including the Group of Seven, that contributed, in her belief, to racist attitudes experienced by her family in Alberta. The mural, titled The Black Canadians (After Cooke), was erected on an outside wall of the gallery only days before Bélisle arrived. The mural is scheduled to remain for one year.
Bélisle has previously said the gallery stands behind Bowen amid the harsh criticism from some in the art world that the mural unfairly depicts the Group of Seven as racists, alongside the Ku Klux Klan and German Nazis.
“It’s interesting art to show,” Bélisle told Wells. “Is it the only interesting art to show? Of course not, not at all. I’m as excited, if not even more excited, by the Riopelle exhibition.”
The gallery recently opened a retrospective on the work of the late Quebec artist Jean Paul Riopelle, marking the Centenary of his birth.
Source: Paul Wells column
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