The MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina is working with the Art Museum at the University of Toronto on an exhibition about the concept of whiteness in North America.
The show, Conceptions of White, is a response to global uprisings against systemic violence against Black, Indigenous and racialized communities.
The exhibition, expected to be on view in 2022, is curated by John Hampton, the MacKenzie's director of programs, with curatorial assistant Lillian O’Brien Davis, along with support from Barbara Fischer, the director and chief curator at the Toronto gallery.
It will examine the origins, development and present reality of whiteness as a concept invented to classify degrees of humanity and justify inhumane actions and social structures, the gallery says.
"White identity was invented—alongside Black and Indigenous identities—to differentiate between “civilized” bodies, labouring bodies, and bodies in need of displacement/erasure."
The MacKenzie notes that the Ku Klux Klan established a division in Saskatchewan beginning in 1926 and had about 25,000 members at its height. More recently, police have taken Indigenous people to the edge of Saskatoon in winter and left them to freeze to death.
Comments and suggestions can be made to programdevelopment@mackenzie.art.
Source: MacKenzie Art Gallery
