Attention on the Black art experience in Canada is somewhere it has never been before at the Vancouver Art Gallery — the architectural centre of the neo-classical building in the rotunda on the third floor.
A text work written on panels and directly on building surfaces by artist Nya Lewis focuses attention on the institutional promises and disappointments of Black Canadians which have largely been ignored by the VAG since it was founded in 1931.
Above one side of the rotunda are the words: “The Promise to the Black Canadian.” Directly opposite, “The Myth of the Black Canadian.”
One of the work’s panels in block letters starts with “The illusion of a quilt of equitable voices,” and ends with, “I didn’t realize I was missing.”
Lewis said she wanted the work, Commit Us To Memory, in the rotunda because its central location means that viewers can’t ignore the Black experience and, “You’re forced to reckon with me and forced to stop and read it.”
The work draws attention to the building’s imposing institutional architecture and the VAG’s role in shaping ideas about what constitutes art in B.C.
“Vancouver just doesn’t think it needs to reckon with Black histories because we’re not Toronto, we’re not Montreal,” Lewis said in an interview.
Lewis is guest curator for the exhibition Where Do We Go From Here? She played a central role in bringing art by Black and African Canadian artists Jessie Addo, Rebecca Bair, Chantal Gibson, Jan Wade, Tafui and herself into the exhibition, which explores the historical gaps and absences in the gallery’s collection. It also builds on the VAG’s 2020 statement in support of Black Lives Matter.
The work of decolonizing collections and exhibitions and including minority and Indigenous voices is one of the challenges facing cultural institutions across the country.
In Victoria, for example, Premier John Horgan recently appointed former finance minister Carole James to investigate the “dysfunctional and toxic workplace” at the Royal B.C. Museum, as well as charges of institutional and personal racism.
At the VAG, Lewis said the gallery was in the early stages of a completely different show on the formal elements in the work of Emily Carr and the Group of Seven, which celebrated its centenary in 2020. Planning was taking place last May when George Floyd was recorded on video being killed by a police officer in Minneapolis. Protests drawing attention to anti-Black racism spread around the world — including Vancouver.
Lewis, who is doing her master of fine arts in curatorial studies and working for the Museum of Anthropology in its African collection, was asked by the VAG to become involved in planning an exhibition.
“I said I would come on as a guest or contributing curator, but that we would have to start from scratch,” said Lewis, founder of BlackArt Gastown.
“They were, honestly, really kind, really open,” she said. “We did a lot of training together.”
The VAG, she said, could have ignored the call to action represented by Floyd’s death.
“To their credit, they were like, ‘We want to do this. We don’t have a Black person. We need to have someone join our team even if it’s just temporary so we can get the ball rolling.’ I think it was quite brilliant on their end.”
Diana Freundl, the VAG’s interim chief curator and associate director, said the gallery recognizes that an artist such as Emily Carr is an important part of the visual history of B.C. The VAG was bequeathed almost 200 works by Carr following her death.
The gallery also recognized it doesn’t have a history of showing Black Canadian artists, and lacked works in its collection by Black Canadians.
Freundl said the VAG reached out to Lewis for help to better reflect the diversity of artistic expression in the community.
“Rather than say to Nya, ‘Oh, we would like to include you in a show, or can you recommend some names.’ We said, ‘Would you collaborate with us and would you be a guest curator?’” Freundl said.
She said the VAG saw that Lewis has an expertise in Black Canadian art and culture.
“Having someone who has the experience, knowledge, and relationships with artists, we wanted not only to collaborate with her on the exhibition, but also learn from her,” she said.
Freundl acknowledged that some of the discussions during planning were challenging because people were made aware of their blindspots.
“It can open you up to vulnerability,” she said. “It can be uncomfortable.”
Freundl believes the process has made the VAG’s curatorial department better.
“The only regret is that it would have been great to begin it earlier.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
