Andrew Cohen: National Gallery of Canada just can't quit anti-art 'decolonization' plan
After a season of turmoil at the National Gallery of Canada, the picture is brightening. A change of leadership — the appointment of a much-respected director and the departure of much-discredited ones — offers an opportunity to restore competence and confidence to the country’s leading visual-arts institution.
Since the arrival of Sasha Suda in 2019, followed by Angela Cassie (as interim director) in 2022, the gallery has been the battleground of Canada’s strangest cultural war. In the name of “decolonization” and “indigenization,” Suda and Cassie reimagined the gallery they thought too white, old, male and European, as if it were a portrait in still life. Suda fired staff carelessly, including several esteemed managers. She cancelled exhibitions, recast others, and delivered the “first ever” strategic plan. It was heavy on diversity, inclusion and equity, and light on history, humility and clarity.
No wonder things have turned out badly. This is what happens when a venerable national institution falls into the hands of a pair of artless, feckless autocrats endorsed by a weak board of trustees — all in full-throated support of a wooly, misguided mantra of “transformation.”
However, Suda wasn’t bilingual, had never run a gallery or supervised a big staff, and had few publications. That isn’t surprising for someone who was appointed director at 38, the youngest in 100 years. What is surprising was the process that put her in charge of an iconic cultural institution in a G7 country, a seat once filled by Jean Sutherland Boggs, Shirley Thomson and Pierre Théberge, all experts in the field.
Suda clashed with donors. She disliked the work of Jean-Paul Riopelle, the celebrated artist, and alienated donors, among them David Thomson, who stopped supporting the now shuttered Canadian Photography Institute. Suda hired Cassie as chief strategy and inclusion officer.
“Transformation is necessary,” she insisted, even if her position was temporary, and even if, under Mayer’s stewardship, the gallery had opened the Indigenous and Canadian Galleries in 2017, recognizing the work of Aboriginals and women. It was a major undertaking, among other acquisitions and exhibitions, to raise their stature.
Transform Together is gibberish. Its tone is precious and preachy, salted with buzzwords (“interconnection” and “intersectionality”) and issuing clarion calls (“brave conversations”). It was not the first such plan, despite Suda’s repeated claims. Amid the hopes, boasts and tropes, “art” barely appears.
This is what happens when you outsource ideas to “change” consultants in California — listen for the jargon of hipsters on rollerblades — who heavily shaped the gallery’s plan. The goals of access, justice, inclusion, diversity and equity are worthy and necessary — and yes, they’re challenging museums everywhere to rethink the composition of their staffs, the makeup of their audiences and the content of their collections.
If the trustees insist their plan is a “roadmap,” if they insist on holding up an “anti-racist, anti-oppression lens” to everything, they won’t persuade anyone.
In July the gallery is to mount a banner by interdisciplinary artist Deanna Bowen on the south exterior wall that reportedly references the white supremacy found in gallery’s past leadership and historical collection
Based on this article i can see that the author believes that only "whites" are able to hold managerial positions in art institutions.
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