Contradictory Truths?
A large and complex work at the National Gallery of Canada is fuelling heated curatorial debate – before it’s even installed.
Deanna Bowen, “The Black Canadians (after Cooke),” 2023 (© Deanna Bowen, courtesy the artist and MKG127)
Montreal artist Deanna Bowen’s massive artwork about racism is not yet installed at the National Gallery of Canada but it is already provoking fierce reaction, both positive and negative, including a rare public criticism from the Ottawa gallery’s influential former senior curator of Canadian art, Charles Hill.
Is the national institution that championed the Group of Seven a century ago endorsing work that besmirches the reputation of Canada’s most famous artists, as Hill argues? Or is it, as the project’s curator Jonathan Shaughnessy maintains, including previously marginalized voices in a discussion about Canadian history and art?
Come mid-July, the art that provoked this debate, The Black Canadians (after Cooke), by Bowen, a Black artist and assistant professor at Concordia University, will be installed on the gallery’s exterior wall for all to see.
The work, which Hill calls a “screed,” includes 17 panels up to two storeys high that reproduce enlarged photographs of politicians, racist academics, the Ku Klux Klan, a swastika-wearing Nazi soldier and artists from the Group of Seven.
The gallery released images of the work, but has provided no text panels – if any exist – that might explain to the public why the photographs of the artists are placed alongside the politicians and unsavoury characters meant to illustrate the racism Bowen’s family experienced after immigrating to Alberta from the United States in the early 20th century.
“It’s a means to, again, come to terms with, or to better understand, the experiences that my family had and then, from there, to situate ourselves within greater histories,” Bowen told a recent media briefing organized by the gallery. “Who are the people, that as civil servants, as, you know, patriotic Canadians, who are the people that contributed to the hardship my family experienced.”
The November 1911 issue of MacLean’s Magazine
showing Britton B. Cooke’s article, “The Black Canadian,” next to a drawing on the opposite page, “Sunday on a Skyscraper,” by Lawren Harris.
The title of Bowen’s installation refers to Britton B. Cooke, a journalist who wrote an article for the November 1911 edition of MacLean’s Magazine opposing Black immigration to Canada. Beside the article on the second page of that issue of the magazine is an apparently unrelated drawing of a building by Group of Seven frontman Lawren Harris. The unattributed drawing of a Black boy that illustrates the article appears at the centre of Bowen’s work.
Bowen has said Harris “illustrated” Cooke’s racist article, a linkage that has angered Hill, who worked as the curator of Canadian art at the National Gallery from 1980 to 2014, and is one of Canada’s leading experts on the Group of Seven. Hill organized a 1995 gallery exhibition called The Group of Seven: Art for a Nation, which toured nationally. The exhibition catalogue remains a must-read for Group scholars.
Charles Hill on the cover of Canadian Art magazine in the fall of 1995.
“Deanna Bowen’s photographic collage The Black Canadians (after Cooke) is to be installed on the façade of the National Gallery of Canada in July,” Hill writes in a critique titled Guilt by Association, which has been circulating in the Canadian art world. “Whether its presentation is self-flagellation on the gallery’s part, or a parting shot from the ancien regime to the new director upon his arrival, is not clear.”
Jean-François Bélisle will become the National Gallery’s director July 17. He succeeds Sasha Suda and her interim replacement, Angela Cassie, who both pushed decolonization agendas and ruffled many feathers. It’s not known how Bélisle will manage the controversy.
“In Bowen’s work, the members of the Group of Seven are not only associated with Nazis but also with Barker Fairley,” Hill writes. Fairley, a scholar and artist who opposed Black immigration to Canada, will also be seen on the National Gallery’s outside wall in an enlarged 1920 photo with six artists who would gain fame as members of the Group of Seven.
These are just some of Hill’s complaints about a work he says defames not only the Group of Seven, but also Eric Brown, the first director of the National Gallery and a fan of the Group’s work.
“Bowen has stated,” Hill continues, “‘I never want to make a work that white people can consume and walk away from.’ No visitor will be able to walk away from this screed without asking numerous questions.”
Another critic of Bowen’s work is Christopher Varley, a former chief curator at what is now the Art Gallery of Alberta and the grandson of Group member Frederick Varley.
“I’m not sure that people will think the Group are being equated with racists, but Bowen certainly contextualized them as such,” Varley said in an email interview with Galleries West.
“I would have to see the mural installed to really comment on its merits beyond its messaging, which is seething with ill-will. I’m not upset about any of this, (nor do I) feel superannuated, or suffer from what some of the sneering, scoffing, snide right-wing commentariat call ‘white guilt’; but the naivety of the culture warriors – the automatic assumption that they hold the moral high ground, that they have the right to dictate the terms of reality to others – is practically begging for a ‘knock your block off’ response. I would suggest to those seeking ‘historical justice’ that courtship is a more promising route to the altar than guilt trips or threats.”
Deanna Bowen
But Bowen’s work is backed by other curators, among them, Naomi Potter, director of Calgary’s Esker Foundation. In an email to Galleries West, she calls Bowen’s installation “important work about, yes, the racist history of Canada, and the ways all of us, even the mighty Group of Seven, are implicit in this history.” A comment from the Esker posted on the National Gallery’s Instagram page applauds Bowen’s forthcoming installation by saying: “Congratulations on this important commission.”
A positive comment was also posted on Instagram by John Hampton, director of Regina’s MacKenzie Art Gallery, which is showing, until Aug. 6, Bowen’s solo exhibition, Black Drones in the Hive, which covers some of the same themes as the National Gallery project. It includes a wall of Group of Seven landscapes from the MacKenzie’s permanent collection. “Stunning,” Hampton wrote. “An important and inspiring work, that I can’t wait to see in person, bravo.”
Shaughnessy, the National Gallery’s director of curatorial initiatives, told the media briefing that Bowen’s work “helps us see that multiple and even contradictory truths are possible at the same time.”
“The Black Canadians (after Cooke) continues the important work of reckoning embarked by the gallery to foster a dialogue around the story of Canada and Canadian art, in recognition of the many voices historically marginalized on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, class, disabilities and otherwise,” he said.
“There are so many perspectives that remain to be told, and most importantly, in our context, visualized. Deanna’s project asks … how dominant narratives might be unsettled by excavating the records, realities and experiences of those excluded from full participation in the freedoms of citizenship afforded by the promise of being Canadian.”
Bowen’s art, Shaughnessy added, “suggests that the artistic legacies that still define ideas around the Canadian landscape and Canadian settlement were not created in a vacuum. There is a context to everything, and The Black Canadians argues the legacies that have defined Canadian art history have formative roots within a closely knit socio-cultural and political power base.”
Shaughnessy asked Bowen what dialogue she hopes the installation will inspire.
“I want to have a conversation about this history, about Black history,” Bowen replied, describing her project as “a door opener.”
“I want people to know that Black people’s history matters and actually has the power to create significant change.” ■
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