We introduce a curator who will spotlight Indigenous ceramics at the Gardiner Museum.
If you’re interested in ceramics, you’ve probably been to the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, one of the only museums in the world dedicated exclusively to the medium, with holdings representing production from across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Last year the museum named Franchesca Hebert-Spence its first curator of Indigenous ceramics. It’s a significant hire: she’s a ceramist herself and Anishinaabe (Sagkeeng First Nation), and the museum is situated within the ancestral and traditional territories of many nations, including the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat, and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. With the Gardiner’s commitment to building long-term relationships with Indigenous communities, Hebert-Spence is key to developing a new Indigenous Gallery. We talked to her about the experiences she brings to the project and her vision for it, when it opens later this year.
What is the most important message you wish to convey in the gallery, and how do you plan to do this?
A key element to the new installation is to ensure that work from the Great Lakes region where the museum is located is represented, from time immemorial to the present day. Within my curatorial practice, it’s important to create a space where artists and community members can share their stories: it’s less about educating visitors and more about people coming into the space and having it resonate with their own stories and lived experiences. This will manifest itself by straying from “meta art histories” or art discourses that center on “exceptionalism” or “genius,” and thinking instead about broader gestures and relationships, focusing on visual cultural production rooted in an Indigenous perspective and value system. Please note that I’m using the word Indigenous as a shorthand for community-specific relationships, because communities are too often painted with overly broad strokes, and nuances are lost.
How does the Indigenous Gallery fit into the Gardiner Museum’s overall mission and collections? Do you foresee interchange between these objects and the others in the collection?
Yup! I am working with other curators to create spaces with shared dialogues. There is no question that Indigenous cultural production has a much-deserved place within any contemporary and modern dialogue. Just look at Judy Chartrand’s Métis Soup series, a cheeky nod to Andy Warhol that also opens whole conversations around food security, traditional foods, and cultural practices. But there are also both non-Indigenous and Indigenous cultural works from the ancient Americas that share stories with work made by contemporary Indigenous artists within Canada.
Tell us a bit about your personal journey in the study of Indigenous ceramics.
My ceramics professor at Brandon University was Lin Xu, who emphasized the community aspect of ceramics, such as going to conferences, contributing to wood firings, etiquette on sharing studio space, and so on. In addition, I was incredibly fortunate to have several Indigenous professors (Cathy Mattes, Peter Morin, Colleen Cutschall) in my undergraduate program, and consistently learning from Indigenous professors in my degrees onwards (including my PhD supervisor, Carmen Roberston) has had an incredible impact on the kind of discourse and questions I bring to my day-to-day, whether in academia or curating or who I am to the people I love.
Do you hope that this gallery will increase interest in the subject, in both Canada and the US?
There are Indigenous communities close to Toronto whose cultural centers have already created displays of historical and contemporary works by their artists, so arguably larger institutions are following the work that those centers have already done. I hope the approach the Gardiner is taking will inspire other institutions to look to the makers and communities in their own areas and see how they’re actively making culture that isn’t represented in art narratives that strive for “global relevance.”
