A Collection Built on Relationships

September 30, 2024 to February 28, 2025

Reception: Saturday, October 5 from 1 PM – 3 PM

Curated by Felicity Pope and Olinda Casimiro

 The idea for this exhibition emerged as an effort to inform our community about Inuit culture. The objects in the Marsh Collection are a window into a crucial point in Inuit history and art history, a period of profound cultural change, yet since they arrived at the AGN in 1976, they had never been thoroughly researched. In 2021, working alongside Felicity Pope, co-curator of this exhibition, we began to ask what it would take to bring these objects to the AGN community.

Over the next three years, Felicity spearheaded extensive research into the history of the Marsh Collection and the historical context in which it was assembled, re-connecting these works to their communities of origin and, where possible, to the names of the artists who made them. We consulted with Isabelle Avingaq Choquette, Curator at Avataq Cultural Institute, Montreal, to gain a better understanding of their materials, preservation, and the contemporary learnings that inform their presentation in the exhibition and here, in this catalogue.

In 2015, the Canadian Museums Association (CMA) was named in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action #67, calling on galleries and museums to address their colonial origins and bring their policies and practices into alignment with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). This included the delivery of a report, Moved to Action: Activating UNDRIP in Canadian Museums, completed in 2022, that includes recommendations that will guide museums and galleries across the country as we work towards reconciliation.

Conceived the same year as Governor General Mary Simon became the first Indigenous person to hold the position in Canada, A Collection Built on Relationships seeks to contribute to this work by opening important discussions about the AGN’s role in Canada’s colonial history. This exhibition and this catalogue provide us with an opportunity to pause, reflect, and contemplate works of art that continue to inform the fabric of our cultural heritage.

– Olinda Casimiro