Best of Memory
Indian & Inuit Art Centres
"You can come into this room and feel the power in it," says Barry Ace, dramatically, opening the dull grey door of the vault. Ace's tall frame virtually fills the doorway. As Chief of the Indian and Inuit Art Centres, he's done this innumerable times. Rows of objects and pieces of sculpture lie carefully identified on otherwise unadorned wooden shelves. Paintings and drawings await their next showings housed in grey metal storage units.
Ace knows the story of each one.
"It has its own sense of power," he continues, speaking of the vault as he walks along the bright green tiles. "I can feel it. To me, this is it. You're keeper of your own history... You're basically the custodians of your communities' cultural history."
As a cultural history it's one still fairly unknown outside the aboriginal communities, ignored or banished from our "corporate cultural memory". Calling the country "young", for instance, overlooks historical aboriginal cultural heritage and frequently perpetuates the ignorance of contemporary practice linked to that past. Ace and his handful of co-workers work to preserve and engender contemporary art practices by aboriginal artists.
For instance, the collection includes work by Judith Morgan, a Gitksan artist from northern British Columbia. As a Grade 9 student at Albernie Residential School, she entered a contest to create a poster for the Canadian Tuberculosis Society in 1949. It was a disease that had ravaged aboriginal communities. She won and went on to become a painter, focusing on the life and the people around her.
"Even though her work has become very collectible, she's slipped through the cracks of all the major institutions,” says Ace. “We are the only national Indian art program continually purchasing work - and we exhibit people from across the country."
The Indian Art Centre mounted a retrospective of Morgan's work, including the tiny silver cup she was awarded for first prize in the poster contest.
"To paint them accurately would be to portray a Nation under siege and put aboard a space ship that has an umbilical cord anchored to a snag that was once a green tree and labeled a 'Reserve,'" writes Morgan, describing her people in the exhibition catalogue's introduction.
During the 50s and 60s, what was then called the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs changed its policies towards aboriginal cultural practices. New departmental economic programs promoted aboriginal cultural products like baskets, moccasins, sculpture and so on. It's ironic that the Centres emerged from these same policies. It's an even deeper irony that they exist in a department originally set up to assimilate aboriginal people.
At the time, Tom Hill, working in the department, took advantage of the broad marketing mandate to push for the creation of the two centres. He went on to become the first aboriginal curator in Canada.
Each centre developed in quite different ways, in part due to the differences in the communities they support and the existence of the Indian Act.
"Our relationship with artists in the North, at best, can be described as inconsistent," writes Barry Pottle, research officer with the Inuit Art Centre, in an on-line interview. "Language is still the biggest obstacle. Regional dialects and loss of the language (Inuktitut) by Southern-based Inuit factor into building a relationship."
"Northern communities have very different lifestyles. With people working, hunting and travelling, communication tends to be slow. Sometimes the artists don't want to talk or they simply don't have the technology.... Past relationships emphasized the art and not the artist ...(but) the situation is changing...."
On the Inuit side, the Centre's entire collection of 5,000 pieces was dispersed in 1990, to national institutions and a few northern communities.
"This collection housed some of the best Inuit art in Canada by leading Inuit artists," writes Pottle. In addition to providing material to researchers, referrals, and support to artists, policy changes are underway to allow the rebuilding of the Inuit collection. Already it includes work by Oviloo Tunnillie form Cape Dorset, Mattiusi Iyaituk, and Toronto-based David Ruben Piqtoukun.
Keeping an eye steadfastly on the future, both Centres split funding and resources 60/40. Sixty percent is devoted entirely to new and so-called "emerging" artists.
Spanning the last 120 years, the Indian Art Centre contains the largest collection of contemporary Canadian Indian art in the world—over 4,000 photographs, paintings, installations, drawings, cultural artworks, sculpture and apocrypha. For instance, in addition to pieces by Norval Morrisseau, the Centre has the entire correspondence between him and Royal Ontario Museum ethnographer, Selwyn Dewdney.
"This is the history of contemporary Indian art curated by Indians," says Ace. "Each individual leaves their mark on the collection. When you're from the culture, you are so much closer to it."
"It's a working collection," he adds, constantly emphasizing this fact. The National Gallery, the Canadian Museum of Civilization and other institutions regularly borrow work. Strangely, both Centres have higher profiles abroad than in Canada. The Indian Art Centre curated the inaugural show for the reopening of the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris in 1997. Travelling exhibitions have been sent to Europe and Costa Rica, and places as far away as Taipei and New Zealand. Both centres also regularly loan work to American cultural institutions.
Each has an Artist in Residence program where peer juries choose work to exhibit in the small galleries on the ground floor. Changed every few weeks, the exhibitions serve as the source for acquisitions.
"The artists have repeatedly stated that they look at this collection as a perpetual bundle, as a sacred medicine bundle. That's our history there, that's our lives there - that's why it is such a major...meaningful responsibility, "says Ace.
Perpetual Bundle the large retrospective of work from the Indian Art Centre is scheduled to open next year. The National Gallery turned it down.
"We're booked," says Ace. "`Unfortunately we are unable to collaborate you on this exhibition,’" he adds, quoting a letter from the National Gallery, "That's what I was told." As a result, Perpetual Bundle will open at the Waikato Museum of Art and History in Hamilton, New Zealand, in September 2001.
"My big dream was that I was going to be a lawyer...a constitutional lawyer," Ace recalls, of his original career path. "I was going to be fighting for Indian rights." But Ace acknowledges that that first degree has been instrumental in navigating the institutional politics forming the backdrop to the Centres' work. It was a major in Political Science.
"I'd use a lot of visuals when I was teaching," he says. Ace taught a course called "Canadian Politics, the Law, and Aboriginal People" at the University of Sudbury.
"I thought that was one way of presenting something that could create dialogue. I was giving this course around the time of the Oka crisis, and I started to incorporate art. I used art as a point of departure to discuss these issues, and then I realized how powerful it was."
Published in The Ottawa Xpress, 2000
Ace knows the story of each one.
"It has its own sense of power," he continues, speaking of the vault as he walks along the bright green tiles. "I can feel it. To me, this is it. You're keeper of your own history... You're basically the custodians of your communities' cultural history."
As a cultural history it's one still fairly unknown outside the aboriginal communities, ignored or banished from our "corporate cultural memory". Calling the country "young", for instance, overlooks historical aboriginal cultural heritage and frequently perpetuates the ignorance of contemporary practice linked to that past. Ace and his handful of co-workers work to preserve and engender contemporary art practices by aboriginal artists.
For instance, the collection includes work by Judith Morgan, a Gitksan artist from northern British Columbia. As a Grade 9 student at Albernie Residential School, she entered a contest to create a poster for the Canadian Tuberculosis Society in 1949. It was a disease that had ravaged aboriginal communities. She won and went on to become a painter, focusing on the life and the people around her.
"Even though her work has become very collectible, she's slipped through the cracks of all the major institutions,” says Ace. “We are the only national Indian art program continually purchasing work - and we exhibit people from across the country."
The Indian Art Centre mounted a retrospective of Morgan's work, including the tiny silver cup she was awarded for first prize in the poster contest.
"To paint them accurately would be to portray a Nation under siege and put aboard a space ship that has an umbilical cord anchored to a snag that was once a green tree and labeled a 'Reserve,'" writes Morgan, describing her people in the exhibition catalogue's introduction.
During the 50s and 60s, what was then called the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs changed its policies towards aboriginal cultural practices. New departmental economic programs promoted aboriginal cultural products like baskets, moccasins, sculpture and so on. It's ironic that the Centres emerged from these same policies. It's an even deeper irony that they exist in a department originally set up to assimilate aboriginal people.
At the time, Tom Hill, working in the department, took advantage of the broad marketing mandate to push for the creation of the two centres. He went on to become the first aboriginal curator in Canada.
Each centre developed in quite different ways, in part due to the differences in the communities they support and the existence of the Indian Act.
"Our relationship with artists in the North, at best, can be described as inconsistent," writes Barry Pottle, research officer with the Inuit Art Centre, in an on-line interview. "Language is still the biggest obstacle. Regional dialects and loss of the language (Inuktitut) by Southern-based Inuit factor into building a relationship."
"Northern communities have very different lifestyles. With people working, hunting and travelling, communication tends to be slow. Sometimes the artists don't want to talk or they simply don't have the technology.... Past relationships emphasized the art and not the artist ...(but) the situation is changing...."
On the Inuit side, the Centre's entire collection of 5,000 pieces was dispersed in 1990, to national institutions and a few northern communities.
"This collection housed some of the best Inuit art in Canada by leading Inuit artists," writes Pottle. In addition to providing material to researchers, referrals, and support to artists, policy changes are underway to allow the rebuilding of the Inuit collection. Already it includes work by Oviloo Tunnillie form Cape Dorset, Mattiusi Iyaituk, and Toronto-based David Ruben Piqtoukun.
Keeping an eye steadfastly on the future, both Centres split funding and resources 60/40. Sixty percent is devoted entirely to new and so-called "emerging" artists.
Spanning the last 120 years, the Indian Art Centre contains the largest collection of contemporary Canadian Indian art in the world—over 4,000 photographs, paintings, installations, drawings, cultural artworks, sculpture and apocrypha. For instance, in addition to pieces by Norval Morrisseau, the Centre has the entire correspondence between him and Royal Ontario Museum ethnographer, Selwyn Dewdney.
"This is the history of contemporary Indian art curated by Indians," says Ace. "Each individual leaves their mark on the collection. When you're from the culture, you are so much closer to it."
"It's a working collection," he adds, constantly emphasizing this fact. The National Gallery, the Canadian Museum of Civilization and other institutions regularly borrow work. Strangely, both Centres have higher profiles abroad than in Canada. The Indian Art Centre curated the inaugural show for the reopening of the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris in 1997. Travelling exhibitions have been sent to Europe and Costa Rica, and places as far away as Taipei and New Zealand. Both centres also regularly loan work to American cultural institutions.
Each has an Artist in Residence program where peer juries choose work to exhibit in the small galleries on the ground floor. Changed every few weeks, the exhibitions serve as the source for acquisitions.
"The artists have repeatedly stated that they look at this collection as a perpetual bundle, as a sacred medicine bundle. That's our history there, that's our lives there - that's why it is such a major...meaningful responsibility, "says Ace.
Perpetual Bundle the large retrospective of work from the Indian Art Centre is scheduled to open next year. The National Gallery turned it down.
"We're booked," says Ace. "`Unfortunately we are unable to collaborate you on this exhibition,’" he adds, quoting a letter from the National Gallery, "That's what I was told." As a result, Perpetual Bundle will open at the Waikato Museum of Art and History in Hamilton, New Zealand, in September 2001.
"My big dream was that I was going to be a lawyer...a constitutional lawyer," Ace recalls, of his original career path. "I was going to be fighting for Indian rights." But Ace acknowledges that that first degree has been instrumental in navigating the institutional politics forming the backdrop to the Centres' work. It was a major in Political Science.
"I'd use a lot of visuals when I was teaching," he says. Ace taught a course called "Canadian Politics, the Law, and Aboriginal People" at the University of Sudbury.
"I thought that was one way of presenting something that could create dialogue. I was giving this course around the time of the Oka crisis, and I started to incorporate art. I used art as a point of departure to discuss these issues, and then I realized how powerful it was."
Published in The Ottawa Xpress, 2000
