Aboriginal Canada Revisited

THE ART OF EXCLUSION: THE STATUS OF ABORIGINAL ART IN THE McMICHAEL CANADIAN ART COLLECTION

Siobhdn N. Smith THE ART OF EXCLUSION: THE STATUS OF ABORIGINAL ART IN THE MCMICHAEL CANADIAN ART COLLECTION1 INTRODUCTION The exclusion of the arts of Native peoples implies that the artistic and cultural contributions to Canadian history by Canada's First Nations are non-existent. —Martin 1991,19 Since 1927,with the National Gallery of Canada's colonialist exhibition titled Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art, Native and Modern, Canadian public art galleries have been grappling (often unsuccessfully) with how Aboriginal and Euro-Canadian artworks should come together to define Canadian art.2 In spite of more than two decades of effort by Aboriginal artists and curators to create change, Aboriginal art in Canada still occupies a peripheral place in mainstream Canadian art histories and galleries. During the 19805, Canada's public museums and galleries came under scrutiny for their unwillingness to includeAboriginal art into their definitions of Canadian art. Bythe 19905, amidst the political upheaval of the rejection of 158 - * • > ' . > . . I ' s i O N the Meech LakeAccord; the armed standoff in Oka, Quebec, and the protests against the celebration of Columbus Day, various Aboriginal groups, including the Society of Canadian Artists of Native Ancestry, demanded policy changes to Canadian museums and galleries (Martin looia, 50). Specific requests for change were outlined in three major reports: in 1991, Lee-Ann Martins The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion: Contemporary Native Art and PublicArt Museums in Canada-, in 1992,the Task Force on Museums and First Peoples' Turning thePage: ForgingNew Partnerships BetweenMuseums and First Peoples; and in 1996, "Gathering Strength," volume three of the Report of the Royal Commission onAboriginal Peoples. The recommendations of these three reports focused attention on four major issues affecting Aboriginal communities ' interactions with museums: interpretation, access, representation, and repatriation. Due to the release of these three reports, many major public museums and arts-funding agencies in Canada have instituted changes to their collecting , exhibiting, funding, and hiring practices in order to be more inclusive of Aboriginal Canadians. Changes have ranged from the introduction of the Canada Council for the Arts' Aboriginal-focusedgrant programs to specific policies for the repatriation of cultural objects and human remains in museum collections. Both the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario have made changes to their permanent collection installations of Canadian historical art to "explore the complex relationships among First Nations and the French and British settler societies" (Art Gallery of Ontario, online). Despite these changes, the place ofAboriginal art within the histories of Canadian art is still not certain or secure. One art gallery that has been attempting to incorporate Aboriginal art into the history of Canadian art since the 19605 isthe McMichael CanadianArt Collection, apublic art gallery located in Kleinburg, Ontario. Between the 19805 and 19905, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection (MCAC) was progressive in implementing inclusive collecting and exhibiting policies and practices.3 Amendments to its mandate in the 19805 officially incorporated Aboriginal art into its definition of"Canadian cultural heritage," so that between 1982and 2000, the board of the MCAC could collect "works 159 SIOBHAN N. SMITH of art created by Indian, Inuit and Metis artists" (McMichael Canadian Art CollectionArt1989).However, on November 2,2000, Bill 112,AnAct to amend the McMichael Canadian Art Collection Act, became law, and among the amendments wasthe erasure of anyreference to Aboriginal art in the gallerys collecting mandate. The legislation had been tabled at the request of gallery co-founder Robert McMichael, and wasfuelled by his desire to regain control of the public gallerys collecting practices. At that time, it was suggested that this statute had finally put an end to "one of the country's longest-running artistic fights/ that is, an end to the fight between gallery co-founder Robert McMichael and the board of directors of the MCAC for control over the gallery s collecting practices (Procuta 2000, Ai). In the explanatory note of Bill 112, it is stated that the Bill would recognize Robert McMichaels claim that "the focus of the collection has changed over time" and that it was therefore necessary to "return the collection to, and then maintain it in, the spirit ofits original focus" (Bill 1122000). In defence of the necessity for Bill 112,Robert McMichael argued that the MCAC collection had strayed from his original intent for the gallery, which, he claimed, had been to focus the collection around the works of the Group of Seven painters...