On Aug. 24, the city announced its decision not to install two bronze sculptures it commissioned from artist Ken Lum in 2010 because “they may cause harm and induce painful memories.” The sculptures, known as The Buffalo and the Buffalo Fur Trader, cost $375,000 and were placed in a storage container in 2016.
But a Friday news release from the city sought to clarify the earlier statement on the decision, which rested “on the potential for the artwork to be misinterpreted as a celebration of colonization.” Rather, the decision “was based on ‘potential misinterpretation’ that the work could be seen to ‘celebrate colonialism’ and may therefore cause harm,” the city said Friday.
The installation was intended to bookend a walkway along the Walterdale Bridge with a sculpture of a buffalo and another of a fur trader staring “warily at one another across the expanse of the North Saskatchewan River,” a description of the project on Lum’s website reads, adding that it portrays a dialectic, or sort of discussion: “the wisdom offered by First Nations and Indigenous peoples (versus) the folly of the rapacious capitalist represented by the hatted white man atop a pile of buffalo pelts.”
In arriving at the decision, the city consulted Edmonton’s Indigenous Framework, adopted in 2021 and informed by Indigenous communities, to determine whether the bridge placement was consistent with its commitments to be “a listener, connector, advocate and partner,” the latest statement said, adding that Lum was not involved in that work.
However, the August statement also referenced an earlier city decision to remove a mural depicting residential school imagery from the Government Centre LRT station.cIn scrapping the mural, the city said it operated under a guiding principal to “do no harm” when considering the effect of art on communities, but the it didn’t mean to impugn Lum’s reputation or imply the his installation was “pro-colonist” either.
‘Resolved amicably’
The city said it has worked with Lum to transfer ownership of the artwork from the municipal public art collection to an alternate location of the artist’s choosing.
An email statement from Paul Bain, Lum’s lawyer and a parter at Dickinson Wright, said the art will remain in Alberta, for which the artist is grateful.
“The matter has been resolved amicably and the City of Edmonton co-operated with the artist to get to this result, short of any legal action,” Bain said. “Our client is happy this is resolved and the matter is now behind him.”
— With files from The Canadian Press
