Image used with permission from Rae Hutton, Design by Lauren Bosc THINKING THROUGH THE MUSEUM: DIFFICULT KNOWLEDGE IN PUBLIC

Annual Report SSHRC Partnership Development Grant March 25, 2015 – April 30, 2016 Prepared by Lauren Bosc (Project Coordinator)

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of . 2015-2016 THINKING THROUGH THE MUSEUM page 2

RESEARCH TEAM & ASSISTANTS:

The Research Team includes:

• Dr. Angela Failler (Project Director, )

• Dr. Heather Igloliorte ()

• Dr. Erica Lehrer (Concordia University)

• Dr. Monica Patterson (Carleton University)

• Lauren Bosc (Project Coordinator, University of Figure 1: Research Team members (L to R): Erica Lehrer, Angela Failler, Winnipeg) Heather Igloliorte, and Monica Patterson. (photo credit: Lauren Bosc) The Research Assistants on this project for the reporting period include:

• Michelle K. Barron (MA student, Carleton University)

• Sylvia Dreaver (Dueck) (BA Hons. student, University of Winnipeg)

• Anna Huard (MA student, University of Winnipeg)

• Alexandra Nahwegahbow (PhD student, Carleton University)

• Amy Prouty (MA student, Carleton University)

• Jordana Starkman (BA student, Concordia University)

• Travis Wysote (PhD student, Concordia University)

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PARTNERSHIP DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES:

Research Meetings/Workshops

Inaugural Team Meeting (Winnipeg, August 8-10, 2015)

From August 9-12, 2015, the PDG team met in Winnipeg, Manitoba to launch “Thinking Through the Museum: Difficult Knowledge in Public.” The four-day meeting involved collaborators and research assistants, and included a field trip to Shoal Lake 40 First Nation’s Museum of Canadian Human Rights Violations, a visit with curators and researchers at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and a visioning session for the project.

Figure 2: Visitors to Shoal Lake 40 First Nation take in the temporary bridge built by the community toward "Freedom Road." (photo credit: Lauren Bosc)

Collecting and Displaying Art Workshop (Winnipeg, February 12, 2016) Thinking through the Museum team members Angela Failler, Heather Igloliorte, Sylvia Dreaver (Dueck), and Lauren Bosc participated in a workshop with UWinnipeg faculty members, MA students, and staff from the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG). The workshop, which featured a lecture by Dr. Igloliorte, a tour of the WAG Inuit art vaults with Curator Darlene Wight, a discussion facilitated by Dr. Failler, and a presentation by WAG Director and CEO Dr. Stephen Borys, functioned as a

productive space to think about how to Figure 3: Research team members view new Inuit Art acquisitions in “think through” Inuit art and curatorial the WAG's art vault (photo credit: Lauren Bosc) practices.

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A large part of the discussion also involved “thinking through” the WAG’s vision for an Inuit Art Centre. This Centre, which would house and display the WAG’s 13,000 Inuit art pieces, will include programming for people of all ages to celebrate and learn about Inuit art through exhibitions, research, education, and art making.

Decolonizing Curatorial Pedagogies Workshop (Ottawa, April 15-16, 2016) This workshop focused on the challenges and possibilities of curating as pedagogy, by examining various pedagogical tools, methodologies, partnerships, and projects that seek to decolonize curatorial practices and engender ethical engagement with the painful histories we inherit. The workshop included tours of the Canadian Museum of History, “Temporal Re-Imaginings” at the Canada Council for the Arts, and “Indigenous Walks” with Jaime Koebel.

It also featured a “live” interview of Carleton Research Assistant and curator Alex Nahwegahbow by UWinnipeg Research Assistant and Art History student Sylvia Dreaver (Dueck). This interview was both a response to Alex’s exhibit “Temporal Re-Imaginings” and an opportunity for students involved with the project to discuss their connections to the workshop theme.

The workshop also included engaging presentations from members of the Canadian Museum of History’s staff, roundtables focusing on decolonizing curatorial pedagogies in the classroom, museums, and galleries, as well as a keynote address from Dr. Amy Lonetree, which was attended by more than 150 people.

Skype Meetings During this reporting period, research team members engaged in three PDG specific skype videoconference meetings (October 29, 2015; January 25, 2016; May 4, 2016). The purpose of these meetings was to discuss the ongoing partnership activities and projects, as well as plan for upcoming research meetings and workshops.

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Museum/Gallery Visits and Ethnography Prompt Sheets

We Were So Far Away: The Inuit Experience of Residential Schools Members of our research team visited the travelling exhibit “We Were So Far Away” on November 27, 2015 while it was displayed in the atrium of the United Way of Winnipeg (580 Main Street, Winnipeg MB). This exhibit, which features stories and photographs from eight Inuit residential school Survivors, was on display in Winnipeg from November 18-30.

After the visit, some team members shared “SnapThoughts” about their experiences: The exhibition title expresses so much with so little: We Were So Far Away – Inuit residential school students were so far away from family, so far away from their culture, so far away from hope. While Survivors’ voices are heard through the display of archival photographs alongside highlighted memories, I found it difficult to connect to the material in the chosen space (the United Way centre lobby on Main Street in Winnipeg). Ultimately, it was the accompanying exhibition book that allowed me to engage on a deeper level with the difficult and powerful stories shared in the exhibit. – Sylvia Dreaver (Dueck)

One of the things that struck me about the archival photographs of residential schools included in We Were So Far Away is that while the names of Monseigneurs, teachers and even some of the photographers appear

Figure 4: Members of the research team at the exhibit, Nov. with the original documentation, the 27, 1015. (photo credit: Lauren Bosc) students were often left nameless. Namelessness is itself evidence of how the students were treated as objects of regulation rather than subjects of their own experiences at the schools. The exhibit’s juxtaposition of these photos with current day profiles of survivors works to recover their agency in the face of such violent erasure. –Angela Failler

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As I read the short descriptions of photographs shared by each Survivor, I was struck by one in particular that accompanied an image of a group of residential school children. Lillian Elias noted that although she thought she was one of the children in the photo, she did not recognize herself in any of the faces. For me, this comment resonated through the rest of the exhibit as the Survivors attempted to recognize themselves in the trauma of the IRS system. – Lauren Bosc

Forgotten: The Métis Residential School Experience Members of our research team visited the exhibit, “Forgotten: The Metis Residential School Experience” Exhibit presented by Aboriginal Student Support & Community Relations at Red River College, on December 4, 2015. This travelling exhibit features images, poems, found objects, and curated content, all of which engage with the subject of the Métis people of Canada a their experiences with the Residential School system.

The Witness Blanket Members of our research team visited the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to view “The Witness Blanket” exhibit and hear the artist talk on January 20, 2016. Carey Newman (Ha-yalth-kingeme), a master wood carver of British, Kwagiulth, and Salish ancestry from Vancouver Island, is touring his work across Canada over the next 7 years. The piece includes objects collected from Indian Residential Schools, survivors, and family members in Canada from coast-to-coast-to-coast.

After the visit, some team members shared “SnapThoughts” about their experiences: Figure 5: Witness Blanket excerpt. (photo credit: Angela Failler)

Listening to the artist speak to the layers of story and memory in his piece brought The Witness Blanket to life. His description of the emotional labour that went into working with and through the objects was as powerful and moving as the piece itself. Learning from difficult knowledge requires more than collecting information about the past. – Lauren Bosc

The Witness Blanket IOS Mobile App is one of the most effective digital extensions of an exhibit I have encountered. It brings home the depth of the collection, making its objects accessible beyond the museum itself. It also raises the question of how difficult knowledge might be mediated through exhibition design. – Angela Failler

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To me, the braids of hair near the center of the blanket represent the notion of losing connection to culture. This detail illustrates the robbed childhood of a (First) Nation and a legacy of abuse many Canadians have yet to come to terms with. – Anna Huard

Canadian Museum of History: Grand Hall, First Peoples Hall The research team visited the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa on April 15, 2016. Before hearing presentations about the proposed Canadian History Hall, opening July 1, 2017, the team toured the Grand Hall and the First Peoples Hall.

Temporal Re-Imaginings On April 15, 2016, The research team had the pleasure of visiting the exhibit, “Temporal Re-Imaginings,” curated by Research Assistant Alex Nahwegahbow. The exhibit, located in the Âjagemô gallery in the lobby of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa, invites visitors to re-imagine time through Indigenous art. This exhibit was the first exhibit ever curated by Alex and was met with great acclaim.

Figure 6: “Temporal Re-Imaginings visitors listen to curator Alex

Nahwegahbow as she leads a tour of her exhibit. (photo credit: Lauren Bosc)

KNOWLEDGE MOBILIZATION: Museum Statements Archive

Led by Erica Lehrer and Research Assistant Jordana Starkman, the partnership project has gathered a number of political and social public statements released by museums and galleries across the world. The purpose of this archive is to consider the ways museums can be leaders in drawing attention to pressing social issues. The archive, available on the project website (http://thinkingthroughthemuseum.org/resources-archives/statement-archive/), features statements on: • Black Lives Matter • Canadian Truth and Reconciliation • Syrian Refugees The statements have been released from: • American Association for State and Local History

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• Art Museum Teaching • Association of Midwest Museums • Canadian Museums Association • The Incluseum • McCord Museum • Museum 2.0 • Museum Questions: Reflections on Museums, Programs, and Visitors • New England Museum Association • Radio Canada International • Royal Ontario Museum • Salaam Cultural Museum • Smithsonian Magazine • Textile Museum of Canada • United States Holocaust Memorial Museum • Virginia Holocaust Museum

Website and Social Media Development

thinkingthroughthemuseum.org The project’s website, thinkingthroughthemuseum.org, was purchased on June 17, 2015. Since then, the website has been populated with 36 permanent content pages, 20 separate posts, and has received 7 comments on various pages/posts.

The permanent pages include information on the project’s partners, research team, research assistants, workshops, tools (such as museum ethnography sheets and hashtags), resources/archives (including the museum statements archive, relevant links, and a scholarly reading list), and a contact page.

The posts on the website feature information such as news stories, time-sensitive events, op-eds, blog posts, and “SnapThoughts.” There are currently two blog posts, with at least two more to be posted in the next few months. The website’s SnapThoughts, which are quick, reflective responses to exhibitions, galleries, and museum spaces from our Research Assistants and Research Team, also invite visitors to contribute their own SnapThought to each post in the comments, encouraging direct engagement with the museum/gallery visits that the research members take.

The website’s “insights” function was engaged on April 25, 2016, and since then has recorded 315 unique site visits from people in 30 different countries.

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Facebook Page The Thinking through the Museum Facebook page was created on May 4, 2016. As of June 1, 2016, the page has 52 “likes.” This page has posted nine separate times and has made “impressions” on more than 680 people from these posts. From the page’s insights, we can also note that the majority of those who like our page identify on Facebook as women (83%) aged 18-65+. Our Facebook page has also made some very positive connections, reaching across the world and viewed in more than a dozen languages.

@MuseumThinkers Twitter Account The @MuseumThinkers Twitter account was created on February 12, 2016 and has since tweeted 42 times, mainly during the public workshops in February and April. Many of the tweets the account wrote have been retweeted and favourited by those who follow the account. The @MuseumThinkers account also has 32 accounts following it, and 32 accounts that it follows, many of which are interested individuals and organizations.

The Twitter account has also used a number of hashtags (#) to connect followers to the Thinking through the Museum project, including #thinkingthroughinuitart, #decolonizingcuratorialpedagogies, and #thinkingthroughthemuseum. All hashtags are also listed on our website so they can be easily accessed for those who are interested (http://thinkingthroughthemuseum.org/tools/hashtags/).

Events, Publishing, and Presentations

“Curatorial Practice and Learning from Difficult Knowledge” Dr. Angela Failler has published a co-written chapter with the late Roger I. Simon in the new volume The Idea of a Human Rights Museum edited by Karen Busby, Adam Mueller and Andrew Woolford (University of Manitoba Press 2015). The chapter, “Curatorial Practice and Learning from Difficult Knowledge,” opens with a dedication in memory of Simon: “I, Angela Failler, have developed this chapter from a proposed abstract, recent conference papers and other writings by Roger I. Simon, who was Professor Emeritus at the Ontario

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Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto. Roger died on September 17, 2012 before he could carry out a draft of the chapter himself. He entrusted these materials to me with the hope that his ideas would yet contribute to meaningful conversation on the prospect of a human rights museum. Undoubtedly, they already do. Roger was an eminent scholar whose provocative inquiries into ethics, pedagogy, remembrance and social justice have influenced educators, curators, artists and cultural critics alike, those committed to thinking through the difficulties of bearing witness to violent pasts in the present. To be sure, his legacy has touched other contributors to and readers of this book.”

Journal Special Issue Launch The official launch of the special double issue of the Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, titled Caring for Difficult Knowledge: Prospects for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, co- edited by Angela Failler, Peter Ives, and Heather Milne and featuring contributions from 9 members of the University of Winnipeg community [with a foreword by Erica Lehrer

Figure 7: UWinnipeg and UManitoba contributors (L to R): Larissa Wodtke, Peter (Concordia)] was held on Ives, Mavis Reimer, Serenity Joo, Karen Sharma, Angela Failler, Michael Dudley, November 4, 2015. The Serena Keshavjee, Kate Ready, and Heather Milne (photo credit: Lauren Bosc) event included a panel discussion by the editors with guests Mavis Reimer (Dean of Graduate Studies) and Michael Dudley (University of Winnipeg Library), as well as opening comments by Dr. Annette Trimbee, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Winnipeg.

SakKijâjuk Exhibition Opens in Happy Valley-Goose Bay SakKijâjuk: Inuit Fine Art and Craft from is the first-ever nationally touring exhibition of Labrador Inuit art from Nunatsiavut. Curated by Dr. Heather Igloliorte, the exhibition opened in Happy Valley-Goose Bay (HV-GB) on November 19, 2015, and will tour the province of Newfoundland and Labrador before the grand opening at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in the fall of 2016. This Inuit art exhibition is unlike anything that has ever happened before. In its first stage, it is a major, community-oriented exhibition, organized according to the Inuit values and principles of shared

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leadership, collective decision-making, intergenerational knowledge-sharing, and inclusion. The creation of the project has emerged from a large-scale community consultation process over a two- year period; Nunatsiavut artists and craftspeople are directly involved in the selection of works for the exhibition; numerous artists have been involved in workshops and other training opportunities leading up to the exhibition; and most importantly, all Nunatsiavut Beneficiaries over the age of 18 are welcome to participate in the exhibition and everyone who applies will have their work included in the exhibition. Then, for the second stage of the exhibition, a selection of works from the November 2015 exhibit will join other Nunatsiavut art and craft works from collections across Canada for an exhibition that will open at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in September 2016, before touring to major galleries and museums across Canada, in order to introduce our exciting craft and artwork to the world.

For more information, please see the exhibition website: http://www.michnunatsiavut.org/.

Dr. Patterson speaks at Social Theory, Politics, and the Arts International Conference On December 11, Dr. Monica Patterson spoke about the Thinking through the Museum project at the Social Theory, Politics, and the Arts International Conference in Adelaide, Australia at the University of South Australia. Dr. Patterson’s paper, “Difficult Knowledge in Public: Thinking through the Museum” was presented in

the Postcolonial Issues in Arts Figure 8: Dr. Patterson at her talk in Australia. and Culture area during a parallel paper session. Her paper discussed this partnership and the concept of working through difficult knowledge in the context of museum and gallery exhibitions. More information on the conference can be accessed at http://stpaconference.org/.

While in Australia, Dr. Patterson was also featured as a guest on guest on “Blackchat,” on Koori Radio in Redfern, Sydney’s only First Nations radio station. She was there to talk about postcolonial issues in arts and culture, and some of the challenges and possibilities for achieving social justice in Canada and the United States

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“Thinking through the Canadian Museum for Human Rights” Dr. Erica Lehrer has published an unflinching and generative review of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in volume 67, issue 4 of American Quarterly, titled” Thinking through the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.”

Here is a brief excerpt of the content: “‘This ice you’re standing on, this is what you’ll be drinking down in Winnipeg next spring. For you, this is life. For people here, it can be death.’ I am shivering along with a dozen Winnipeg-based academics and students listening to Cuyler Cotton, a policy analyst and media relations specialist, in the community of Shoal Lake No. 40 on a mid-January day, looking out across the frozen lake that separates the local band of Ojibway First Nations, inhabitants of Shoal Lake, from access to the nearest highway. One hundred years ago the Canadian government sold this portion of First Nation terrain to the city of Winnipeg to build an aqueduct to supply the urban residents with clean water. As collateral damage, the Shoal Lake No. 40 peninsula was sliced into an island. This intrusion into the landscape left the local people to drink boiled or bottled water and traverse the lake by boat or winter road—treacherous in late fall and early spring with the insufficiently frozen surface—and living amid their own trash and sewage, which leaches into their water supply.”

Dr. Patterson contributes to Carleton FASS Blog Dr. Monica Patterson has recently written a blog post on Carleton University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) Blog titled “Profane Perambulations – A Public Humanities Experiment in the Parliamentary Precinct.”

Her post describes an experimental walking tour of Ottawa’s parliamentary precinct she participated in last September (2015). As she explains in her post: “A dozen speakers staged short, five-minute provocations at eight sites of existing, proposed, or future memorialization. Standing on a soap box and speaking into a bull horn, speakers probed the palimpsest nature of Ottawa’s memorial landscape while bearing witness to counter-memories and hidden histories that official sites often obscure.”

Review of “Caring for Difficult Knowledge” Last year, research team member Angela Failler co-edited a special double issue of The Review of Education Pedagogy and Cultural Studies titled “Caring for Difficult Knowledge: Prospects for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.” The issue, which featured a Foreword written by team member Erica Lehrer, was officially launched in November 2015.

Since the launch, Michael Dudley has written a generative review of the issue on his blog, The Decolonized Librarian. The review is titled “The Dialectic of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.”

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CKUW Radio (University of Winnipeg) Interviews Dr. Angela Failler on the Canadian Museum for Human Rights On December 3, 2015, research team member Dr. Angela Failler spoke with radio hosts Aleem Khan and Derek Brueckner on Eat Your Arts & Vegetables. This show, which broadcasts from the University of Winnipeg’s campus radio station CKUW 95.9 FM, presents guests of diverse backgrounds and perspectives ranging from local self taught artists to internationally renowned interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary artists. The show’s mandate offers artists, curators, art academics, cultural workers and organizations a resource to promote their work and ideas in conjunction with current local art events.

Figure 9: Dr. Failler at CKUW. Dr. Failler spoke about her research work over the past few years on the Canadian Museum for Human rights and working through “difficult knowledge” in relation to the Thinking through the Museum project.

Dr. Nadine Blumer & Dr. Erica Lehrer win Connection Grant The Thinking through the Museum team would like to congratulate co-applicants Dr. Nadine Blumer, a research collaborator on the Thinking through the Museum project, and Dr. Erica Lehrer for being awarded a SSHRC Connection Grant (2015-2016). It will support the research creation project, “Moving Memory: Difficult Histories in Dialogue,” curated by Dr. Nadine Blumer in collaboration with Dr. Hourig Attarian and artist-researcher Anique Vered.

“Moving Memory” is a collaborative multi-sited research exhibition about the Armenian and Roma genocides that proposes creative solutions to museological and scholarly conflicts around commemoration. The exhibit, a mix of performance and interactive digital media installations, will take place in CaPSL (the Curating and Public Scholarship Lab) as well as opening up into a live conversational happening in the foyer of Concordia’s EV building. By literally moving memory, this project interlinks physical, discursive, and digital spaces of representation, catalyzing the movement of ideas and historical narratives locally and transnationally, and prompting audiences to think through histories of violence in relation to, rather than in opposition to one another. The exhibit launches on June 6th, 2016 as part of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies conference being hosted by Concordia University and UQAM

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Dr. Erica Lehrer awarded Insight Grant Dr. Erica Lehrer has been awarded a SSHRC Insight Grant valued at $133,268 for a 4-year comparative project focusing on Poland and Canada entitled “Difficult Heritage in National Museums.” As Lehrer describes the project:

Major museums worldwide are increasingly billed as sites of human rights and democratic spaces of introspection and critical thinking. But given museums’ origins as organs of the state, questions simultaneously arise regarding how museums can best do the difficult work of opening public discussions around painful, contested histories that may implicate the very nations they represent. The proposed project probes the ability of two major new national museums in Canada and Poland, countries that have both recently begun grappling with their difficult histories in public, to meet their own stated mandates for social justice. It does so by seeking creative ways to operationalize postcolonial discourses of “critical museology” filtering into establishment museums by new cohorts of activist curators.

NEXT STEPS:

Workshops The research team and assistants are planning a workshop in , Québec, hosted by Erica Lehrer and Heather Igloliorte titled “Tools and Technologies for Critical Museology.” There are also plans underway to host a workshop in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which tentatively includes a visit to the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21.

Upcoming Projects In relation to the Thinking through the Museum project, team members are also interested in beginning a “queering the museum” project that brings in critical discussions of museums/galleries and how they intersect with queer people, issues, and subjects.

Final Thoughts on Year 1, from Project Director Angela Failler:

The first year of our project exceeded my expectations. The Partnership Development Grant provides for a crucial development phase that is too often rushed or overlooked. We’ve already been able to make meaningful connections with other researchers, practitioners, communities, and institutions that will become the basis for trusting relationships and future research partnership.