The National Gallery of Canada’s “paternalism” in promoting its vision of Canadian art in the West receives a pointed critique in a new book about the history of public art galleries in Western Canada.
Author Anne Whitelaw, an art historian at Concordia University in Montreal, says the recent move by the National Gallery to operate satellite spaces within the Art Gallery of Alberta and the Winnipeg Art Gallery is the latest incarnation of programs in the 1900s that offered fine arts programming to nascent galleries in the West.
“Both as a service to smaller arts organizations and attempts to educate the Canadian public about art, these exhibition programs appear to share a certain paternalism – a concern over the qualities of exhibitions organized by smaller galleries and faith in the ability of the national institution to bring excellence to the regions,” Whitelaw writes in her epilogue to Spaces and Places for Art: Making Art Institutions in Western Canada, 1912-1990.
Whitelaw points to current debates in arts communities in Winnipeg and Edmonton, where some decry what they see as the failure of public galleries to sufficiently support and present work by local artists. She notes that shows such as the Disasters of War and Los Caprichos by Francisco de Goya, an initial 2010 show provided by the National Gallery in its dedicated space within the Edmonton gallery, boost museum attendance but are of “little benefit to raising the profile of local artists.”
She also notes a one-way flow of programming from Central Canada to the regions.
“Despite the claim to partnership – which does entail collaboration between the two institutions in the creation and development of exhibitions – there does not appear to be a flow of exhibitions from regional galleries to the NGC.”
Whitelaw, who taught for 11 years at the University of Alberta, spent 12 years researching this book. She argues such institutional histories are “woefully needed” because galleries play a vital role in framing cultural discourses.
Her book analyses the consumption, production and circulation of art as Western institutions began building collections. She also looks at the impact of national initiatives such as the Massey Commission, which reported in 1951, as well as funding programs of the Canada Council and policies of the National Museums Corporation.
The book starts with the 1912 founding of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the first public exhibition space in Western Canada, and follows with other institutions, like the Art Gallery of Alberta, originally established in 1924 as the Edmonton Museum of Arts.
While Spaces and Places for Art, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, is academic in tone, Whitelaw’s writing is accessible. Even a quick flip through its black-and-white images of paintings displayed in small rooms in modest buildings, so different than today’s palatial galleries, underlines how far the West has traveled culturally from its humble origins.