Shui Lee Hnetinka talks about her favourite Gallery: AGO
The head of the Art Gallery of Ontario says while
the museum has made progress in creating an art world that is more inclusive,
there is still room for improvement.
'We
have a lot of work to do'
AGO's
Canadian art department changes name
AGO director Stephan Jost was responding Wednesday to
criticism from one of the museum's former curators, who said he recently left
his job because he was worried "about an institution wavering in its
commitment to make space for new voices."
Andrew Hunter, who had served as the AGO's Canadian
art curator since May 2013, left the gallery in September. In a Toronto Star column this
week, Hunter expressed disappointment that art institutions
aren't progressing quickly enough in their attempts to be more inclusive,
especially when it comes to Canada's Indigenous community.
In the piece, he said the AGO is "an institution that remains (like
so many others in this country) burdened by, and seemingly committed to, a
deeply problematic and divisive history defined by exclusion and erasure."
In a phone interview
Wednesday, Hunter explained that his goal in writing the essay was to provide
constructive criticism to the museum, and to clearly express his aims to the
public.
"I think often people
leave institutions like there's some critical things that need to be said,
but it's hard to say them," he said.
'We
have a lot of work to do'
Jost said he agrees with
Hunter that the art world needs to try harder to be accessible to people of
colour, who have historically been left out of many of these kinds of
institutions.
"I think that's
something that we've made huge progress on, but I also think we have a lot of
work to do," Jost said.
Hunter said that while
inclusivity was a frequent topic of conversation with his colleagues, those
discussions didn't always make it to the decision-makers. And even when change
was implemented, he said he was often frustrated by how hard it was to sustain.
Hunter said the museum did a good job of attracting
audience members outside of their subscription base during a 2015
exhibit of black American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat's work,
for example. An advisory board was set up to forge connections with emerging
visual artists in Toronto's black communities, and the museum was glad to see
the exhibit reach new audiences.
But he said no such effort was made last year, when
Chicago artist Theaster Gates exhibited at the museum.
"There was a real opportunity for the AGO,"
he said. But instead "it presented Theaster as an artist, but the deeper
part of what his work is about didn't really get embraced through the
institution."
Hunter said the museum did a good job of attracting
audience members outside of their subscription base during a 2015
exhibit of black American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat's work,
for example. An advisory board was set up to forge connections with emerging
visual artists in Toronto's black communities, and the museum was glad to see
the exhibit reach new audiences.
But he said no such effort was made last year, when
Chicago artist Theaster Gates exhibited at the museum.
"There was a real opportunity for the AGO,"
he said. But instead "it presented Theaster as an artist, but the deeper
part of what his work is about didn't really get embraced through the
institution."
Hunter said the museum did a good job of attracting
audience members outside of their subscription base during a 2015
exhibit of black American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat's work,
for example. An advisory board was set up to forge connections with emerging
visual artists in Toronto's black communities, and the museum was glad to see
the exhibit reach new audiences.
But he said no such effort was made last year, when
Chicago artist Theaster Gates exhibited at the museum.
"There was a real opportunity for the AGO,"
he said. But instead "it presented Theaster as an artist, but the deeper
part of what his work is about didn't really get embraced through the
institution."
Jost said he remains
optimistic that art institutions can open their doors to a wider audience.
"I believe that
museums have an incredibly important cultural role to help make us more
inclusive, and help us gain greater cultural understanding, both of ourselves
and other communities," he said
He pointed to a current
AGO exhibit devoted to filmmaker Guillermo del Toro as an
example.
"He's Mexican-born,
yet his kids go to school here in Toronto," Jost said. "He's created
a really magical exhibition, but it also is challenging to our audience,
because it's not comfortably in the high-art conversation."
AGO's
Canadian art department changes name
Meantime, the AGO
announced this week that their Canadian art department will become the
department of Canadian and Indigenous Art, and named Wanda Nanibush to the new
position of curator of Indigenous art.
Georgiana Uhlyarik has
been named the curator of the new Canadian and Indigenous Art department.
Jost said the choice to
include Indigenous artwork within the umbrella of Canadian work, rather than
classifying it in a separate category, is a model he learned about in
conversation with friends in New Zealand. The Te Papa museum in Wellington is
built around parallel curatorial structures, he said: "one Maori, one
settler communities."
"Wanda and
Georgiana's proposal to me was to have two parallel narratives, which makes a
lot of sense in terms of how to talk about Canadian and Indigenous cultures,
parallel and always interacting with each other," he said.
Hunter expressed
skepticism about the announcement coming on the same day as his public
comments, but an AGO spokesperson said discussions had been under way for a
while.
"This moment of
change provided the right time to put those discussions into action, including
the renaming of the Canadian art department," she said.
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