Cuts at the War Museum and Canadian History museum

Maybe this is what the Carney government really thinks about the importance of historical and cultural matters in our current situation. The CBC reports:

The Canadian Museum of History and the Canadian War Museum will be cutting permanent staff levels by 18 per cent over the next three years due to cuts announced in the federal budget.

Avra ​​Gibbs-Lamey, a spokesperson for the history museum — which also manages the war museum — told Radio-Canada that permanent staff will drop from 371 to 304.

Museums in Trouble here and there

Halton Region, a government covering a large suburban region just west of Toronto, has announced it is shutting down its heritage activities forthwith and may be selling off its 35,000 item records-and-artifacts collection.  The collection is "currently held in an archive and former museum located in Milton, Ont."  As recently as 2021, the Region committed $8 million toward a new museum facility for the region.  (But in 2024 the region was put under the control of Doug Ford's Ontario government, which is increasingly bigfooting local governments, usually to cut budgets.)

The Toronto Star story linked to above notes historians, museologists and their agencies rallying against this decision, which they note was taken without public consultation.  Notably, public historian Jamie Bradburn had an op-ed in yesterday's Star arguing the value and importance of local museums, archives, and heritage agencies.

In an era rife with misinformation, in which governments increasingly attempt to control their jurisdictions’ historical narratives, public archives have become more important than ever. As repositories of the past, they serve to collect our stories of progress and recount the mistakes we’ve made along the way. They provide vital information to help us make better decisions about the future. They create a sense of community, identity and continuity.

It’s a shame Halton Regional Council doesn’t share this point of view.

Meanwhile, across the border, "The White House has ordered a sweeping review of the Smithsonian's exhibitions and materials as part of President Donald Trump's efforts to promote a rosier presentation of the nation's past." -- and to ensure that next year's commemorations of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence conform to Trumpian visions of the past. 

Update, August 20: Helen Webberley comments 

I have just written a post on public libraries, suggesting that they will reduce in numbers and in significance. But not for the same reasons you are suggesting museums will be reduced. Once everyone in the world is connected to the internet, there will be few people who will need a library to help with research.

[Re] Public historian Jamie Bradburn had an op-ed in yesterday's Star arguing the value and importance of local museums, archives and heritage agencies: Other people will want them closed to save money having to come from unsympathetic council and state authorities. [And to conform to right wing visions of the past].

Well, maybe. But around here public libraries look to be thriving, not least by lending ebooks, music and movies online, and by giving library users available access to otherwise fee-charging websites and online collections.  (Plus, maybe, the pleasure of being in large pleasant spaces surrounded by books and other readers.)

 

A new museum for the Quebecois? UPDATED

Eric Bédard

La Presse has recently been covering the plan of the Quebec government of Francois Legault to create a new national museum for Quebec, one said to be "not dedicated to the history of Quebec but rather to that of the Quebec nation" ("le futur musée ne sera pas consacré à l’histoire du Québec, mais plutôt à celui de la nation québécoise").  

It is already getting pushback, notably in an opinion piece in La Presse from 36 historians and cultural figures led by historians Catherine LaRochelle and Camille Robert:  "Will the contents reflect the state of historiography or will they propose a return to the old national history centred on great events and heroes?" ("Est-ce que les contenus refléteront l’état de l’historiographie ou proposeront-ils un retour au vieux récit national centré sur les grands évènements et les héros?")

The association of Quebec First Nations has also questioned the project declaring that they are not merely the prehistory of Quebec and demanding that recognized Indigenous historians be included in the project.  But a Culture Ministry spokesperson specified, "This will not be a museum of the history of the occupation of the territory of the valley of the St. Lawrence, but a museum of the history of our nation, la nation québécoise."   

Premier Legault was pretty clear where he stood on that question: "My intention, the one I am giving myself, is that the Québécois come from here saying to themselves, 'I'm proud to be Québécois." (« Mon objectif, celui que je me donne, c’est que les Québécois sortent d’ici en se disant “je suis fier d’être québécois”»)

Eric Bédard, the notable Quebec historian who heads the comité scientifique for the museum, specified that the point is "a history of a people of French language and culture." («Le but est de proposer une histoire d’un peuple de langue et de culture françaises»). He suggested that the First Nations perhaps represent "the prehistory of Quebec."

Bédard, a noted scholar of Quebec history who now teaches in TELUQ, the distance education arm of the Universite de Quebec, is a figure without many counterparts in English Canada, a widely published scholar who also has a substantial public profile through writing, broadcasting, and commenting regularly about history in major French-language media. 

Update, May 13:  I was amused to see these exact same quotations (from the same couple of online La Presse articles, no doubt) being the basis of a Saturday Globe and  Mail column by Konrad Yakabuski. Today the Toronto Star has some new sources, notable historians Stephen High and Ronald Rudin, commenting on the same subject.

History of museums

I've been following remotely the quarrel over a new British Columbia Museum, which has now led to cancellation of the current plans. The issue is well covered by Daniel Francis here, and I share his feelings right down to the "royal" part. 

Though I might add: at least they have a BC Museum to fight over in BC.  In Toronto, we have an Ontario Museum, which I love dearly and have supported for decades, but it's not about Ontario at all! Consider the possibilities!

Controversy at the War Museum

Too much war machines; too little war art?

I had not been aware of this controversy at the Canadian War Museum, over the dismissal of film and photography curator Joanne Stober, to whom an arbitrator has now granted reinstatement. There seems to be a troubling number of sudden departures in senior ranks at the national museums.  

Stober left a job as a senior archivist at Library and Archives Canada in 2016 to take on a mission that included showcasing the war museum's existing art holdings while bringing the collection into the digital age. [emphasis added]

For all my admiration of the War Museum, I've long thought it has undervalued its remarkable collection of art.  The museum has a vast trove of magnificent works by many of Canada's leading artists, and only shows a few in out of the way corridors and special exhibits.  I hope Stober's departure/return will not impede the part of her mandate that concerns art holdings.

History of paying for museums

Monet, Arrival of the Normandy Train (image from AGO)

In Toronto the Art Gallery of Ontario recently generated substantial buzz with its announcement of free admission for all visitors 25 and under and a $35 one-year pass for all others (compared to a basic single price of $19.50, and annual memberships over $100).

I salute this project. It will make the AGO, already a lively place, livelier this coming year, and I hope it proves financially feasible serious over the year's test. It also reminded me of all the countries where major public galleries -- and even more, museums and historic sites -- are FREE FREE FREE. I was on about this ten years ago, and I experienced it again recently at the wonderful National Archaeological Museum in Dublin. I thought there about how expensive we in Canada make a family visit to the Royal Ontario Museum, the Museum of Civilisation, or Parks Canada's historic sites.

Speaking of the AGO, we went to see its "Impressionism in the Age of Industry" exhibit last month (it's over now).  Liked the paintings, and was, well, intrigued by the captions. It has been the AGO habit in recent years to strive to place all its exhibits in historical context, as if the artists it shows were all socio-cultural documentary artists. Well, this whole exhibit was about the age of industry, so the commentary made sense. Indeed this historical context stuff ought to appeal to me; it's the kind of interpretation I would try to do myself, probably.

But every time I read about how Monet or Caillebotte were demonstrating their awareness of class difference, and gender oppression, and the transformative power of capitalism, I found myself thinking, okay, but can't you say anything about how they put paint on canvas, or the artistic traditions they were adapting or rejecting?

Truth and Reconciliation Notes

In response to Call to Action 67 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission:

We call upon the federal government to provide funding to the Canadian Museums Association to undertake, in collaboration with Aboriginal peoples, a national review of museum policies and best practices to determine the level of compliance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and to make recommendations.

the Canadian Museums Association has struck a Reconciliation Project Council, which it describes as "a 15-member representative, cohesive and influential team of experts in indigenous culture and museum practices" to oversee a comprehensive and inclusive process of consultation and information gathering leading to a national review of museum policies and practices in this regard.

And the Department of Heritage has announced "substantial financial support to the CMA to assist."

Historian makes difference: Grandin's End of the Myth

“The End of the Myth” has a shadow theme. How is it, Grandin wants to know, that the symbol of America was once a boundless, beckoning frontier and today is a dark and forbidding wall?

That is from the New York Times review of The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America by Greg Grandin, history professor at New York University, previously the author of the prize-winning Fordlandia and other books on large themes.  This new book seems really to have touched a nerve, presenting a large, sensitive, plausible interpretation of where the United States of Donald Trump stands today, based on a profound historical understanding of where it has come from.

The Toronto writer Rick Salutin writes today:

I had an older friend, dead many years now, who spent the chaotic 1940s in China. That decade there blended revolution, civil war, a war with Japan and World War Two. He said that once, hiding under a bridge as bombs exploded all around, he came upon a pamphlet that illuminated the pandemonium. It actually made sense of it, and he felt grateful.

I feel this way about Greg Grandin’s recent, End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. I don’t think I’ve marked and highlighted a book as much since my undergrad days, when far too many volumes looked like that.

Can history enlighten us in difficult times?  Yeah, maybe, sometimes. And this Guardian review of Tim Mackintosh-Smith's Arabs: A 3000 Year History may be drawing to our attention another example.

Speaking of Arabs, Toronto's Aga Khan Museum this week opens an exhibit marking the fiftieth anniversary of the moon landings. What's that got to do with a museum of Middle Eastern and Islamic history and culture, you want to say at first glance.

It is the moon, dummy, you think only the West looks at the moon? Evidently the exhibit is a remarkable exploration of the moon in Islamic science, art, and culture over the millennia.  The Aga Khan's ability to startle and reorient makes it the best museum in Toronto over and over.

[Full disclosure: haven't read either book or seen the exhibit. Not yet, anyway.]

Doing the galleries in Ottawa

Visitors in the History Hall central rotunda, on the giant Canada map

We made a quick trip to Ottawa earlier this week, partly social, partly to see the "new" (well, new since last July) History Hall at the Canadian Museum of History.

I think I like it.  It is pretty serious, more rewarding to those who like to read text and scrutinize the contents of exhibit cases than those who like a full-size stuffed mammoth or a recreated fortress wall looming up ahead of them at every corner.  But what the hell:  when you go to the National Gallery, you don't expect endless showbiz to make it fun for the kiddies; you expect to look at Impressionist masterworks or the best of the 19th century Royal Canadian Academy painters, with serious text panels talking about brushwork and colour sense.  Why shouldn't our historical galleries also be able to be thoughtful and challenging to adults?

Well, because museum bean counters concerned with visitor stats and length-of-stay data drop dead in a faint at the thought. But that's their problem.

The History Hall is not constantly telling us that Canada is and always has been a hellhole of oppression and sexism. But it consistently raises serious issues of indigenous title, of the evolving status of women or workers, of tensions between French and English or between the state and minorities, in a way that I thought was consistently interesting and respectful. It's immense too. Douglas Cardinal's swirling layout covers a vast amount of space: Canadian history matters, it says.  Well done, museum team, I'd say. I'm glad I got a chance to see it.

Comfort's Tadoussac: better in the original, but I love this one

We also dropped in to the National Gallery to see their show about Impressionism.  It's a great building, the National Gallery. (So is the Museum of History, for sure!) The Impressionist show is based on the collection of a Danish philanthropist of the early 20th century. He had Monets and Manets and Renoirs and Pizarros, but if you have been to MOMA or the Musee d'Orsay, you begin to see the Dane's collection is not the very best of the Impressionists, but mostly lesser works more of interest to specialists than big-wow seekers.

By contrast, I thought the Indigenous and Canadian Collection just down the hall really did deliver the big wows. They really do have the best of Canadian art, from aboriginal works through 18th century colonial efforts to the late 19th century Canadian Academicians, and right down to the 20th and 21st century stars.  I had not been among the Gallery's Canadians for years, and it impressed the hell out of me. There had been some damn interesting painters working in this country, and for a long time. 

Canada's History also took a recent look at the new History Hall.

Images:  History Hall (me)  Tadoussac: NGC

Exhibits: General Hunter Shipwreck in VR at Welland Museum

On April 14, the Welland Museum in Ontario's Niagara region, will open the General Hunter Shipwreck Exhibit, featuring the War of 1812 brig General Hunter , which took part in many War of 1812 actions on the Great Lakes before being captured by the Americans at the Battle of Put-In Bay.

General Hunter was wrecked in 1816, still in American service, off what is now Southampton Beach on Ontario's Lake Huron coast.  The wreck was discovered on the beach in 2001 and excavated in 2004.

The exhibit, which continues until the end of December, includes: virtual reality experiences with interactive 3D replicas of the exterior and interior of the ship; videos of the ship in action at the famous Battle of Lake Erie; interpretive panels covering the discovery, excavation and identification of HMS General Hunter; and a specially-constructed replica of the hull. The gallery will also feature a look at other shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. The exhibit is on loan from the Bruce County Museum and Cultural Centre.

More info here.

History of Scandinavia at the Royal Ontario Museum

Thor's Hammer Pendant  (ROM)

Blog has its privileges.  The other day I was an invited guest at the media preview for Vikings, the new exhibit that opens at the Royal Ontario Museum.

The signage for Vikings shows an armed-to-the=teeth longship surging through Toronto Harbour, CN Tower and the city lights in the background.  But the show itself eschews almost all the traditional Viking derring-do, the Skoal! and the Odin! and the horned helmets.  Here's what the Globe critic thought.

Indeed it might have been entitled Recent Findings of Medieval Scandinavian Economic and Social History. The exhibit began with Swedish museums, and draws heavily on recent excavations of settlement sites around the Scandinavian countries.  Particularly featured is material from the townsite of Bjorko, which is not a coastal site on some Atlantic fjord, but located on an island in a lake on the Swedish mainland north of Stockholm. It was a centre of trade, but not exactly one's idea of a Viking homebase.

The socio-economic contexts are lovingly described and many of the artifacts are remarkable.  But on the whole its a calm, serious, not-quite-austere display -- much to my taste, maybe lacking in blockbusterism except in the title. All credit to the ROM for taking it on those terms.  The ROM has also added a supplement about Norse contacts with Canada, which is fairly rote for those who know the state of the question, but does include THE bronze pin and THE spindle whorl, which at one time were pretty much the sum total of Norse artifacts from the L'Anse aux Meadows site.  I'd only ever seen them in pictures before.

Pop culture cred: The exhibit explains briefly the meaning of the Norse concept "Ragnarok."  It refers to the end of the world, which is probably why it works well for the superhero flick that just opened.  The ROM show will have less explosions for sure.

Canadian control of the Franklin wrecks acknowledged

Britain has conceded ownership of the sunken Franklin ships Erebus and Terror to Canada. As naval vessels, they were previously claimed to remain in the possession of the nation that commissioned them, though since 1997 Britain has acknowledged Canadian control of the ships

For a long time, the Franklin expedition was a British story, more than a Canadian one. When the ships sailed and were lost, there was zero Canadian awareness or participation in the doomed exploration project. But the ships are in Canadian territory now, and the remarkable work done by Parks Canada, the Coast Guard, various Inuit parties and other institutions to find, research, and preserve the remains, demonstrates the appropriateness of the change. 

It's unlikely the British would have taken the time and expense the Canadian agencies have done, even if Canada had tolerated such a foreign intrusion. (Nor would they have coped with the complex diplomacy between Canada, Nunavut and the Inuit community.)

Time in a bottle: the history of Beer

Labatt's the brewers opened in London, Ontario, in 1847.  To mark their 170th anniversary (!), they have launched an online virtual exhibit and timeline of brewing and brewers.

It's done in cooperation with Western University, where the Labatts archives are deposited, and with research from Carleton University political and economic historian Matthew Bellamy, who is working on a history of Labatts.

Museum notes: the Glenbow in Calgary

Calgary's Glenbow Museum

I am in Calgary this week, and got a little time free yesterday to drop by on of Canada's great museums, the Glenbow Museum.

Glenbow doesn't have one of those starchitect statement buildings.  It occupies a pretty generic office building but one that is close to the downtown core, adjacent to Convention Centre, the Arts Commons, and a lively bars and restaurants street. It is one of the really good museums of Canada, one that can bring a visitor up short with examples of the excellent -- often underappreciated -- materials available to document the histories and cultures of specific parts of Canada.

Hopkins, Canoes in the Mist (better seen in person)

With not a lot of time, I went to the special exhibits rather than the permanent collections I had seen before. "Picturing the Northwest" is an example of historical art from the region.  Who knew that the Glenbow holds "Canoes in the Mist"?  Frances Anne Hopkins has always been a bit of a crush of mine among early Canadian artists. She strikes me as a good artist, in a kind of Beaux-Arts style, though I think she gets categorized as a painting housewife because her terrific fur trade images came from travels she did with her HBC husband. The exhibit also had a nice Charles Jeffreys from his Qu'Appelle valley series (introduced to me by his grandson Robert Stacey), examples of Carl Runguis's big game art (what did I once write about Rungius?), and a good selection of Charles Russell's cowboy and western art. 

Across the hall "North of Ordinary" introduced me to Geraldine and Douglas Moodie, she a commercial photographer, he an RCMP officer. In the early 1900s he was posted to Hudson Bay and the Arctic islands, and the exhibit draws on the Glenbow's thousand-image collection of their photography there, which is supplemented by their detailed photo logbooks and diaries -- the whole collection recently received from Moodie descendants.  Never heard of them before, but there has to be a book and travelling exhibits coming from this.

Glenbow's Canada150 exhibit "Canadian Stories" has another Hopkins (I'd never seen this one; how many are there?), and some terrific imagery of the west, mountain landscapes, buffalo images, art from Ken Lochead, Edward Burtchinsky,  and even Andy Warhol's Wayne Gretzky.

Along with galleries of Alberta "maverick" culture of sodbusters and pipelayers, the Glenbow has very substantial galleries on prairie and mountain indigenous history and culture, and I was impressed by the substantial number of young indigenous kids around those galleries and the museum in general.  So it was disappointing to see a caption in the Canadian Stories that explained an 1885 military 1873 NWMP sketch with the colonial-minded explanation that "John A. Macdonald knew that... he had to secure the largely lawless west."

You should go.

(Hopkins image source here. Glenbow photo: well, me actually -- can't you tell?) 

History of a National Portrait Gallery

Charlotte Gray (and Lawson Hunter, chairman of the Ottawa  Art Gallery) make the case for a National Portrait Gallery.

This is Salem Bland, a portrait by Lawren Harris. Bland is in the Art Gallery of Ontario, actually, but there are enough other great faces to fill a lot of walls

Barry Lord 1939-2017 RIP, museum curator

Barry Lord, who with his wife and partner Gail Dexter Lord made Lord Cultural Services into "the world's foremost museum planning firm," died the other day, according to this obit.

More on the Lord firm here at its website.

Syria in Toronto

Syrian war-and-peace and the attendant humanitarian disaster are in the headlines. 25.000 31,000 Syrians are finding new homes in Canada. In response, the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto announces "Syria," opening in October.  It looks like a spectacular display, not avoiding current crises but drawing on the rich historical, artistic, and cultural resources of that ancient country.  Exhibit, speakers, concerts, films, events -- it's a lavish and ambitious package.

That's exactly the kind of substantial, provocative, engaged programming we should expect our major museums to be launching regularly.  Kudos to the Aga Khan for stepping up.

Meanwhile the Royal Ontario Museum has?  A highly promoted promo for the glassblower Dale Chihuly.  And recently, an exhibit on tattoos borrowed from a European museum.  Sheesh.

Lawren Harris at the AGO. And the current history of big Toronto institutions

Lake and Mountain (AGO website)

Went down to the Art Gallery of Ontario recently to see The Idea of North, the big Lawren Harris show, the one driven into existence by a Los Angeles gallery galvanized by actor Steve Martin's insistence that Harris is a great 20th century artist.

The AGO participated in the development of the exhibit, but the one showing in Toronto is quite different from the LA show.  Martin's interest is in masterpieces.  He's convinced that Harris's semi-abstract, semi-spiritual images of northern peaks and bergs are the vital and important part of his oeuvre, and the LA show, as best as I can tell from the AGO comments, concentrated on them entirely.

The AGO, however, has bookended the mountain spectaculars with two section on Harris's work in and on Toronto.  The first is largely his small images of houses and streetscapes in the rundown downtown neighbourhood called The Ward.  The second is more generally about his urban and architectural abstractions and their relations to Toronto.

In both these sections, the curatorial emphasis is quite different from the North image.  Where Martin is interested only is masterworks of art, the AGO is sociological and cultural.  It takes note of Harris's neglect of minorities in the Ward and of Inuit in the north, and juxtaposes his works against works by contemporary artists with different techniques and emphases.  Martin, one might guess, wouldn't give a damn about all that.  He's chasing the pantheon, not using art for social criticism.

We noticed, for what it is worth, that the Toronto sections of the exhibit, with many small paintings that repay close attention, seemed much more crowded than the central space with the large, austere Idea of North paintings.

We have been members of both the Art Gallery and the Royal Ontario Museum for years, and I cannot help comparing.  The AGO seems to have interesting programming all the time, very global in scope, but also distinctly engaged with Canada and with Toronto. (The Harris show followed a large Colville retrospective, and other Canadian work is frequently featured.). AGO shows always reflect smart, provocative curatorship.

Right now the ROM is featuring an exhibit on tattooing (from a French museum) and a show of Dale Chihuly's glassblowing craft, both of which seem unambitious, not much interested in connoisseurship, and conveying a feel that they were pushed forward by marketing departments rather than curators. I cannot remember when the ROM last had any interesting programming on a Canadian subject. The new director of the ROM is an American who built his reputation in raising funds from the (large, rich American) private sector.  He succeeds an Australian who did not stay long.  I think the ROM is in trouble.

The Idea of North is at the AGO until September 18.

Update, August 10:  My art historian friend disagrees about the AGO's curatorship. She thinks their context and presentation work on Harris is actually pretty lazy, and the AGO could have done much more to present Harris, who he was, and how his art practice evolved. Fair enough. But I've found myself in two or three conversations about the exhibit, and so far every Canadian agreed they found Harris's big northern paintings -- and Los Angeles's "idea of north" -- left them, well, a bit cold.

Burying Ontario prehistory

Archaeology at the new downtown Toronto courthouse site

In the Toronto Star, journalist John Lorinc and archaeologist Ron Williamson expose a crazy situation in Ontario archaeology.

They remind us that Ontario requires archaeological consultants retained by the public sector or developers for archaeological projects in the province to hold the artifacts they may find in trust for the people of Ontario. But:

Queen Park has for years steadfastly refused to pass laws and provide funding to ensure these objects find their way into archives, museums or back to their rightful owners.

Consequently, some 20,000 boxes of artifacts, many filled with the material evidence of the lives of pre-contact indigenous peoples, languish in storage lockers, garages or the basements of archaeologists. While perhaps catalogued, these objects aren’t readily available to researchers, much less the general public, and, in many cases are simply forgotten.

The rich irony is that while Ontario has North America’s most robust archaeological preservation policy, almost no effort is made to interpret, commemorate and study those artifacts because the rules fall silent when it comes to the question of how to manage the material once it comes out of the ground.

Ontario has the Royal Ontario Museum, but no museum of Ontario.  And, evidently, not much in the way of a museum of Ontario prehistory either.

Image: TorStar. H/t: Andrew Stewart.

Sinking the Maritime Museum in Kingston, Ontario. MCQ's Archives too.

(Used to be an exhibit on Great Lakes shipping history)

"Does Kingston really want its museum?" he asked. "Are we really the city where history and innovation thrive? It really is a question of walking the talk."

Paul Schliesmann of the Whig-Standard reports on how the historic city of Kingston is becoming a little less historic, with the decision to close the Maritime Museum of the Great Lakes. The feds pulled the plug in 2015, and the city would not pick up the slack, and now a new owner of the property is evicting the museum to open the way for development. They are putting the artifacts into bubble wrap and cardboard, and all is to be gone August 23.

Update, same day:  Active History notes the closing on June 23 of Quebec City's Centre de reference de l'Amerique francophone, the archives and research unit of that city's Musee de Civilization.  As Tom Peace says:

Can a public museum without a research service and whose archives are inaccessible to researchers actually call itself a museum?

Image: Maritime Museum of the Great Lakes