Why the NGC needs to change

In the summer of 2021, the NGC launched a new website and associated social media campaign, proudly announcing “The National Gallery of Canada is changing. We are dynamic and alive. We exist beyond the frame.” The Gallery’s new director, Sasha Suda, appointed in 2019, has clearly made Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion a priority. The advertising announces the change; the strategic plan proclaims it. And the summer 2021 installation by Rashid Johnson makes me hopeful. But data is more important than rhetoric. So, for now, I am optimistic. But I also believe we can’t assess progress without knowing the facts and acknowledging just what it is that needs changing.

In the decade from 2011-2020, more than 95% of the solo exhibitions of living artists at the NGC were by white artists. In other words, 20 of 21 solo shows were by white or non-racialized artists. Given the strides towards a more inclusive practice the NGC had made in the previous decade, this record of foregrounding whiteness was a disappointing, even shocking, result.  Numerically, this is a worse record than the previous decade, 2000-2009, when almost 25% of the gallery’s solo shows were by artists of colour (Dymond, Diversity Counts, 2019, Fig. 2.1). So the bare facts of this record are a stark call for change.  

A more nuanced assessment of the data also needs to recognize that in terms of the representation of Indigenous artists, if not other artists of colour — the NGC has made significant progress in the last 20 years, and arguably more progress than this dismal data set suggests. Although I’ve argued that solo shows are an important indicator, the single solo exhibition by an Indigenous artist included in this count arguably does not adequately represent the progress the NGC has made around a more equitable consideration of Indigenous art. This single exhibition was the major career retrospective of Alex Janvier, Denesuline artist from the Cold Lake First Nation in Treaty 6 Territory. It was the most recent in a series of major retrospectives of Indigenous artists. Initiated by Audain Senior Curator of Indigenous Art, Greg Hill, these included senior native artists Charles Edenshaw (2014), who doesn’t make our count because he’s a historic figure, and exhibitions that pre-date this data set by Norval Morrisseau (2006), Robert Davidson (2007), Daphne Odjig (2009), and Carl Beam (2010). In addition, there were:

•  two major group exhibitions, Sakahàn in 2013 and Àbadakone in 2019 (these were initially framed as an FNMI quinquennial, although there was actually 6 years between them); 

• the re-installation of the newly renamed Canadian and Indigenous Galleries in 2017;  

• several smaller group shows of contemporary Indigenous artists, including Don’t Stop Me Now and New Voices from the New North  

 This list makes evident that the NGC has made significant progress since Hill’s appointment as Audain Curator of Indigenous Art in 2007. While I think that this is a place where the metric of solo shows does not tell the whole story, I want to keep the metric as a kind of early warning system. As explained in the methods section, I count solo shows partly for pragmatic reasons, but also because they remain the single most important marker of an artist’s currency in the art world. It reads as if Hill began by the initial 2003 rehang of the permanent galleries; then as he rose to a leadership role, he switched focus to create solo shows of the most senior and far too long excluded Indigenous artists, and more recently has switched focus somewhat to be able to cast a wider net.  

Yet there are several things we need to keep in mind about this as a strategy. First, if major galleries don’t have solo shows of mid-career artists who’ve historically been excluded,  this hampers them from making the leap to international and commercial recognition. It’s also just not fair since plenty of the solos shows of white guys are mid-career.  I assessed the age of artists with solo shows at the NGC from the period 2000-2010, and found it to be significantly older for artists gendered female; that would certainly be true for Indigenous artists who’ve had solo shows at the NGC. Another factor to recognize is that this shift from solo to group shows speaks of the limited resources of one area: of course the Indigenous area, as currently staffed, cannot mount major international group shows and major solo retrospectives year after year, even though that is what is required to rebalance the record.   

Given this history, and the institutional support of a named chair in the Indigenous area at the NGC, it seems clear to me that the movement toward more just representation of FNMI art will continue. The move to decolonize the space is complex but it is demonstrably a priority. So while I applaud the progress with respect to Indigenous representation at the Gallery, it’s important to underline that no racialized artists who aren’t Indigenous had solo shows in this 10-year period; and this is a major warning sign for the NGC, and I think for all galleries in Canada. A new framework for representation needs to be created, but it cannot continue to exclude other artists of colour.