Decolonizing the Art Museum

Making space for Indigenous world views means asking basic questions about art.

by

Haida artist Bill Reid spent a lifetime connecting to his roots through making art. Whether he was crafting a piece of jewelry using traditional techniques or working on the fabrication of a monumental sculpture, he believed his creations were extensions of life itself. As he wrote in his 1971 book, Out of the Silence: “Great art must be a living thing, or it is not art at all.”

But if you visited a public museum a few decades ago, it’s unlikely such words would have featured in your experience. Museums were places where visitors looked at objects that had been collected, for the most part, to attract crowds. Pieces were acquired, displayed, interpreted, stored and cared for with a Eurocentric sensibility.

Among them were thousands of Indigenous works. These pieces were often considered to be curios. How they were acquired didn’t enter the equation. Didactic texts were written in settler languages using settler terminology. When it came time to restore an object, the conservation techniques were not part of Indigenous practices.

The release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report in 2015 made it clear that curators, scholars and others working in the field needed to step up and reconsider how things were done. Discussions started, however, progress was slow.

Now, fast forward to 2021, when a perfect storm – including the pandemic and demands for social justice – helped put commonly held notions about how museums operate under the microscope, leading to a wave of changes. Across the country, institutions are adopting Indigenous names, hiring Indigenous curators, setting up Indigenous advisory circles and updating strategic plans to recognize the importance of building more respectful relationships.

Staff at leading institutions who once viewed themselves as pantheons of history and culture have found themselves on a new footing.  “We have to start thinking of ourselves as settler institutions,” says Sasha Suda, the director of the National Gallery of Canada. She says adopting this mindset will help negotiate “a chasm between the past and present.”

For the Ottawa gallery’s recent Rembrandt exhibition, Gerald McMaster, a Plains Cree member of the Siksika Nation, was tasked with writing about the Dutch master from an Indigenous perspective. To the surprise of some ticket holders, the show also included Indigenous works.

Rembrandt, considered one of the greatest painters of his country’s Golden Age in the 16th and 17th centuries, held a mirror up to Dutch society. Its appetite for opulence was seemingly insatiable. Ordinary citizens could purchase goods from around the globe – spices, carpets, textiles. But those products came at a much greater price than was borne by the buyers. While Dutch citizens prospered, Indigenous peoples around the world suffered enormously, whether they were robbed, enslaved or slaughtered. 

The problem, says Suda, is that art that reflects history according to settler sensibilities doesn’t necessarily resonate with non-settler visitors, who might well ask, “why does no one in these paintings look like me?” And it’s not just about people being absent from the imagery – non-European identity is often subsumed in the display of objects that originally came from places under the control of colonial empires. 

Museums are now starting to re-examine these complex relationships. The National Gallery, for instance, recently completed a strategic plan that embraces a vision informed by Indigeneity. As its curators organized the Rembrandt blockbuster, they decided to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action by including a diverse range of other works. 

Some visitors – and critics – did a double-take. What does a Wampum belt have to do with Rembrandt? As it turns out, a lot. The beads used to make the original belt – the gallery showed a 1993 replica made by Cayuga artist Jake Thomas of the Tawagonshi Agreement, or Two-Row Wampum Treaty, that set the terms of early relations it in between the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and the Dutch – were acquired through an economic supply-chain based on the suppression and, in some cases, the eradication of non-Europeans. 

Suda contends that presenting alternative views of history is a way forward. “What we’re trying to do is pave a more inclusive way into the future,” she says. “We have to adopt a new way of working.”

It’s a sentiment being echoed across Canada. Jaimie Isaac, of Anishinaabe and British descent and a member of the Sagkeeng First Nation northeast of Winnipeg, tackled the decolonization of museums and galleries in her Master’s thesis. Recently hired as chief curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, she is encouraged by recent developments, including increased hiring of Indigenous staff. 

When asked if the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are influencing changing attitudes at museums, Isaac replies, “I’d say ‘yes.’ And it’s also organizations like the arts councils that fund the museums and galleries that endorse them to act in accordance with the TRC’s calls in order to maintain relevancy and ongoing support.”

Isaac says Indigenous curation is important because it affects how collections are interpreted and displayed, but beyond that, “having more voices at the table affects policy.” 

McMaster and Isaac both acknowledge that changes don’t happen overnight. Although it might feel like a zeitgeist moment now, the path forward has been cleared over time. For instance, in 2008, when McMaster was a curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario, he juxtaposed two Anishinaabe works from the 1800s with Tom Thomson’s iconic 1917 painting, The West Wind. The idea, he says, was to inspire viewers to see the painting from an Indigenous viewpoint. “My interest is in the study of ways of seeing,” he says. “We’ve been trained to think about and see the world through a Western lens. What would it look like to see it through an Indigenous lens?”  

Isaac pays tribute to Indigenous people who have been on the front lines for decades. “We see decolonization taking place,” she says. “But it has been a conversation for a long time.” Discussions date back for generations, she says, and the work of the past is helping create meaningful change now on a global scale. But, she adds, more needs to be done.

Skwetsimeltxw Willard ‘Buddy’ Joseph of the West Coast’s Squamish Nation is an Elder-in-residence at the Vancouver Art Gallery and a contributing consultant for the gallery's new building.

What is art? What is a utilitarian object? What is craft? Can one thing be all three? Joseph says Squamish people see no division between art and useful objects. Things like spindle whorls and woven baskets are both useful and beautiful. “If you look at Salish history, everything was utilitarian,” he says. 

For the Squamish, works in institutional collections are vital. “For us, they are sacred,” he says. “It’s about our world view.”

Decolonization, then, can be as much about how art functions as about how museums acquire, display and interpret objects. It’s also about honesty in confronting stories of the past. “Future nations, whether Indigenous or not, will want to know what this was all about,” says Joseph. 

Recent media coverage of communities demanding the return of culturally significant works – perhaps most notably from the Vatican’s vast Indigenous collection – has focused attention on the foundational problems of Eurocentric museum practices. Conversations around repatriation can instil fear at large institutions about the loss of holdings. But the conversations need to be had, says Isaac, who believes artifacts must be considered as dynamic entities – not static things to be hoarded. She cites various problems around the objectification of Indigenous creations and suggests: “Think of artifacts as living and breathing entities that exist within institutions.” 

Anthony Kiendl, who became director of the Vancouver Art Gallery during the pandemic, is among those eagerly embracing a paradigm shift. He acknowledges that institutional changes “have been a long time coming” but sees opportunity in this exceptional time for rethinking how almost everything is done.

“This is an opportunity to look at how we work, starting at that fundamental level,” he says. “People are not only accepting of change but demanding it.” Going forward, he says the gallery will approach all its projects within an Indigenous framework.

Joseph, encouraged by all that is happening, sums up the current sentiment: “This is longterm. It’s not just now. This is ongoing. It’s about healing and it’s about everybody. It’s not just for show. It’s the real thing.” ■  

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