A parliamentary committee member is calling for transparency from Canada’s premier art institution following recent and very public staff turmoil — and he’s imploring Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez to step in.
“It’s important that the minister, because [he] has an overseeing role for our cultural institutions, get the answers to questions that many people are asking,” said Peter Julian, the NDP MP for New Westminster-Burnaby and a member of the standing committee on Canadian heritage, in an interview Monday with Radio-Canada.
Gabrielle Moser, an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education at York University, agreed that Hill’s departure was surprising, pointing to the creation of his role as a groundbreaking moment for the gallery.
But she said talk of his exit has overshadowed recent positive developments, including the launch earlier this year of the gallery’s department of Indigenous ways and decolonization.
“Two newly hired people are still there directing that work,” Moser said, adding that the gallery just hired an associate curator who is Inuk and hails from Nunavut.
“I worry that the big, big reaction [the staff departures are] getting is from an old guard who wants to keep things the way they were and that folks are not willing to see that this might be a necessary stage in changing the gallery so that it is more meaningful to a greater number of people.”
Read the full article on the CBC website.