The Hunter, the Crown and the Cameras
by Dr. Carol Payne (Art History)

Video

This lecture occurred live online on Thursday, May 21, 2020

In a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences’ first, 2019-2020 Marston LaFrance Research Fellowship Winner, Professor Carol Payne (Art History) delivered the annual Marston LaFrance Lecture in a virtual setting.

For the online 2020 Marston LaFrance lecture, Prof. Payne presented her paper The Hunter, the Crown and the Cameras which traces the entangled histories of Inuit and settlers in the Qikiqtaaluk (Baffin) region during the 1950s through photographs, films, and other visual technologies.

The 1950s marked a period of dramatic change in the Qikiqtaaluk region. Transformations included accelerated efforts to assimilate Inuit into southern society, heightened economic interest in extracting resources from Arctic regions, and increased military activity in the Arctic in response to Cold War tensions. Inuit of the region experienced these changes directly through the establishment of settled communities, the coerced relocation of several families from Hudson’s Bay and northern Baffin Island to the High Arctic, and the imposition of mandatory residential or federal day schools for Inuit children. The camera and other visualizing devices were at once witnesses to these devastating events; technologies enlisted to aid the forced assimilation of Inuit as well as claims of Canadian national sovereignty over the Arctic; and tools through which Inuit challenged these forces.

This paper, written from the perspective of a settler, examines how southern assertions of authority over the Arctic and over Inuit lives during the 1950s were both played out and resisted through fields of visualization. Prof. Payne’s specific case study revolves around Joseph Idlout (??-1968), the most extensively photographed and filmed Inuk of his time. Idlout’s image often appeared as a primitivist emblem of Canadian sovereignty even as he suffered from the effects of heightened southern intervention. Yet, Idlout was also a photographer himself. By staging performances of the settler gaze from the perspective of Indigenous sitters, Idlout’s photographs assert Inuit agency and resistance in a time of disruption.

The Marston LaFrance Research Fellowship

Each year, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences awards the Marston LaFrance Research Fellowship to one of its outstanding faculty members, in order to facilitate the completion of a major research project that requires significant release time. Once the year has completed, the Fellowship winner delivers a lecture on the research they were able to accomplish during their time as the Marston LaFrance Fellow. 

The Fellowship was established in 1979 by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in memory of Marston LaFrance, former Professor of English and Dean of Arts at �Ӱ�ԭ�� University. Each year, the recipient presents a seminar or public lecture on some aspect of the research conducted while on the LaFrance Fellowship.

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On February 1, 2020, TVO presented the world broadcast premiere of “.” The TVO Original documentary dives into the shadowy world of art fraud in Canada and brings into question the legacy of Anishinaabe artist and Canadian icon Norval Morrisseau. Filmmaker Jamie Kastner discusses what went into bringing this documentary to life together with Dr. Carmen Robertson (Canada Research Chair in North American Art & Material Culture).

Episode: Passing On Political Leadership; Art Fraud in Canada

TVO Interview link: 

TVO Screening Info: 

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INTERLOCK: A Graduate Student Conference on Interdisciplinarity in Material Culture Studies

The Art History Graduate Students’ Society (AHGSS) and the (ICSLAC) present INTERLOCK, an interdisciplinary conference hosted at �Ӱ�ԭ�� University on March 23rd and 24th, 2018, located on unceded Algonquin Anishnaabeg territory (Ottawa, Ontario). This two-day event is devoted to the exploration of interdisciplinary methods employed in the field of material culture studies, including anthropology, archeology, architecture, art history, communications, film studies, history, law, and psychology, among others.

The relationships between people and the objects we produce and consume are shaped by and inform all aspects of human society. Thus, incorporating varied theories and methodologies from a range of academic fields is imperative to the study of material culture. We welcome submissions from graduate students at the MA and PhD levels, as well as independent scholars. We are interested in presentations that engage in alternative material culture studies through use of varied disciplinary strategies.

Proposals must be sent to interlock2018@gmail.com by January 19th, 2018. In the body of your email, include your name, institutional affiliation, and a short biography (100 words or less) or CV. Please attach your abstract (300 words or less) with a paper title, and a short list of keywords, as a PDF file. For more information, visit our facebook page:

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Brian Foss, Director of the and Professor of Art History, has spent the bulk of the last decade researching an unsung, but instrumental collective of Canadian artists known as the.

Professor Foss’s tenacious research culminated last fall in an exhibition for the titled 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group, which contains nearly 200 paintings, sculptures, drawings and miscellaneous objects borrowed from approximately 30 public and 42 private collections scattered across the country. Foss followed the lead of the primary curator of the show, Jacques Des Rochers, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Curator of Quebec and Canadian Art before 1945. Their teamwork paid tremendous dividends.

The Beaver Hall Group was a diverse assortment of like-minded Montreal based artists, many of whom shared a studio and exhibition space on the city’s Beaver Hall Hill in the early 1920s. Like Toronto’s celebrated Group of Seven, the Beaver Hall Group offered a creative portrayal of life in Canada, but they did so in a very different way. “Unlike the Group of Seven’s vast interpretations of Canada’s natural, unblemished backdrops, Beaver Hall Group art featured portraits of contemporary Canadian individuals, rural life and urbanized, populated cityscapes,” explained Foss.

Formed in 1920, the group disbanded in 1923. The consortium of members and associates included the likes of such Canadian art icons as A.Y. Jackson (the Group’s first president), Mabel May, Lilias Torrance Newton, Randolph Hewton, Edwin Holgate, Mabel Lockerby, Anne Savage, Emily Coonan, Adrien Hébert, Henri Hébert, and Prudence Heward. The association was based more on friendship, peer support and a dedication to modernist approaches to colour, draftsmanship and composition, than on a rigorously defined membership or firm commitment to a single subject matter or nationalist view. Aside from their exceptional work, what made the Beaver Hall Group particularly remarkable was the fact that almost exactly half of its members were female artists, when to be a fully professional artist in Montreal often meant being a man.

’The Beaver Hall Group was thus a broadly inclusive collection of artists,” said Foss. “Unlike the Group of Seven, they encouraged women artists as members of their network. This support was a source of validation. The group also featured both Francophone and Anglophone artists, which helped bridge a divided Montreal scene.”

The resounding uniqueness and obscurity of the Group made it an alluring research subject; but this also presented Foss and Des Rochers with some formidable obstacles.

“It could get frustrating. Almost no documentation survived, and what did was difficult to locate. There were no membership lists or constitutions so we had to spend a lot of time in the archives, and needed to really analyze and dissect interviews that earlier researchers had conducted with the members,” said Foss.

Though the research was arduous, Foss and Des Rochers understood the importance of this undertaking. These artists tell a story about Canada that hasn’t been recounted in any other place. “The Beaver Hall Group offers an alternative, progressive vision of what Canadian modern art can be,” said Foss. “It contrasted the Group of Seven by offering a distinctly Montreal type of modernism.”

So why wasn’t the Group able to carve out an enduring niche in the Canadian consciousness?

“They didn’t have a clear message or narrative to send, unlike the Group of Seven” responded Foss. “They fell victims to their own diverse nature. They stood together as a supportive group of modernists, but beyond that the art was varied, and as a result, they tended not to have a strong public image as a group.”

“It didn’t help that they seem to have held only a few exhibitions during their existence and had only one real spokesperson in A.Y. Jackson. They possessed no political interest in becoming famous. It’s up to us to remember them for the accomplished, progressive artists they were.”

Foss hopes the exhibition 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group helps viewers understand the complexity and quality of this often misunderstood group. “I aspire to cultivate a new appreciation for the Beaver Hall Group, and for people to walk away from the exhibition knowing that there was a thriving modernist art scene in Montreal during the 1920s that was representative of a broad cross section of the city’s artists; that Canadian modernist art of this era was more complicated and multi-faceted than it is often thought to have been.”

1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group opened in October 2015 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and ran until January 31, 2016. The exhibition is on a cross country tour that includes the , followed by a stop at the , and then at the  (Calgary).

The exhibition has been widely reviewed, including in the , the and CBC Radio’s The Sunday Edition, which broadcast a documentary on the Beaver Hall Group and the exhibition.

The catalogue has won the 2016 Melva J. Dwyer Award, given annually by the Art Libraries Society of North America in recognition of exceptional reference or research tools relating to Canadian art and architecture.

The 352-page catalogue includes six substantial essays; dealing with the social and artistic contexts within which the Group was formed (Jacques Des Rochers), the ways in which the Group was later incorrectly interpreted as being a collection of women artists only (Des Rochers), the influence of the members’ artistic training (Hélène Sicotte), Montreal’s rich art, theatre, music, film and dance scene during the Beaver Hall years (Brian Foss), the ways in which the artists explored modernist concerns in their choices of subjects and styles (Esther Trépanier), and the complex roles occupied by women artists in the Beaver Hall Group and in the larger Canadian art world (Kristina Huneault).

Read more about the Beaver Hall Group exhibition in Le Devoir’s piece, , in the Montreal Gazette article,  and in La Presse’s

Banner Image: Prudence Heward / The Immigrants / 1928 / Oil on canvas / 66 × 66 cm / Toronto, private collection / Photo credit: Sean Weaver

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Director of the School for Studies in Art and Culture and Professor of Art History Featured in CBC Radio Documentary for curating 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group

Brian Foss, Director of the School for Studies in Art and Culture and Professor of Art History, has spent the bulk of the last decade researching an unsung but intriguing collective of Canadian artists known as the Beaver Hall Group.  Professor Foss’s tenacious research culminated last fall in an exhibition for the titled 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group, which contains nearly 200 items from a number of institutional collections as well as from 42 private collections. The exhibition features many paintings, sculptures, drawings and miscellaneous objects, borrowed from approximately 75 institutional and private collectors scattered across the country. Foss followed the lead of the primary curator of the show, Jacques Des Rochers, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Curator of Québec and Canadian Art before 1945.  Their teamwork paid tremendous dividends and was a fine example of scholarship undertaken jointly by the university and outside institutions.

1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group received 92,000 visitors over the course of its three-month showing at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and has won this year’s highly coveted Canadian Museums Association’s Award of Outstanding Achievement for Art Exhibitions. In addition, the exhibition catalogue has captured the 2016 Melva J. Dwyer Award, given to exceptional reference or research tools relating to Canadian art and architecture.

The Beaver Hall Group was a diverse assortment of like-minded Montreal-based artists, many of whom shared a studio and exhibition space on the city’s Beaver Hall Hill in the early 1920’s. Like Toronto’s celebrated Group of Seven, the Beaver Hall Group offered a creative portrayal of life in Canada; but they did so in a very different way. “Unlike the Group of Seven’s vast interpretations of Canada’s natural, unblemished backdrops, Beaver Hall Group art featured portraits of contemporary Canadian individuals, rural life and urbanized, populated cityscapes,” explains Foss.

Listen to CBC Radio’s  featuring �Ӱ�ԭ�� University’s Brian Foss and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts’ Jacques Des Rochers.

For more information about Foss and the exhibit read: Remembering The Beaver Hall Group – Canada’s Unsung Modernists (PDF), the cover story fo FASSinate 2016.

Post Image Description: Mabel May | Housetops, View from My Studio, University Street | 1925 | Oil on canvas 61 x 76.2 cm | Private collection | Photo credit: Michael Cullen

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Mari Carmen Ramírez is the Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and Director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Prior to that, she was curator of Latin American Art at the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art and adjunct lecturer in the department of art and art history, both at The University of Texas at Austin. Ramírez also served as director of the Museo de Antropología, Historia y Arte de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus. She received a Ph. D. in Art History from the University of Chicago in 1989.

In advance of the Shirley Thompson Memorial Lecture (March 30th, 2016, 6-8 pm Lecture Hall, National Gallery of Canada), FASS recently had the pleasure of chatting with Dr.Ramírez about array of topics and issues.  Enjoy!

The Shirley Thomson Memorial Lecture that you are giving at the National Gallery of Canada is titled “From ‘Identity’ to ‘the Global’: The Contemporary Art Paradigm in Latin America.” I imagine it is difficult to represent Latin America as a totality, yet you’re able to do so in a way that underlines the endless complexities of ‘Latin America.”  How challenging is this and how, tactically, do you take this endeavour on?

Engaging Latin America or Latin American art as a category is a very challenging but necessary task. We have to start by recognizing that Latin America is an invention that each generation or cultural group re-invents according to its historical needs. The term stands for a subcontinent made up of more than twenty countries and a plethora of communities and ethnicities that extend from Tierra del Fuego to the US/Canada border. And if you are surprised to hear me say this, just consider that there are 54 million Latinos in the United States today which make up approximately 17% of the population. This makes the U.S. the largest Spanish-speaking country after Mexico.

From that point of view, there is no such thing as “Latin American” or “Latino art” (in the sense of a readily codified and identifiable artistic style or language). Instead, there is only art produced by individual artists in the countries and communities that make up the region as whole. Those of us who work in this field are fully aware of this paradox. We knowingly and deliberately use the terms “Latin American” and “Latino art” as operative constructs that duly serve us to identify the traits of two broad networks of producers, agents and supporters whose culture shares the common legacies of religion, language and most importantly, a history of colonial domination and utopian aspirations. Our job is to reveal the complexities, contradictions, differences and similarities that both join and separate these complex constituencies in their relation among themselves as well as with the rest of the world.

You have a tendency to use your work, which is grounded in Latin American art, to talk about identity politics and globalizing art history, exhibitions, and museums more generally. Can you tell us how your work forwards this more global approach, and why you think it is important to do so?

For the last thirty years we have been witnessing the “ascent” of Latin American art in global circuits as a result of the combined dynamics of globalization and neo-liberalism. The field has evolved from a marginalized one to with a vibrant, steadily expanding area of visual arts production, collecting, and curatorial practice. More and more artists from Latin America are exhibited and collected all over the world; an increasing number of collectors from the region are joining the ranks of the global elites; old museums are being refurbished and new ones are being constructed; and, more importantly, the markets are booming with Latin American art. In many ways, Latin American art is no longer a marginal or provincial phenomenon. Yet many of the same problems that characterized the field three or four decades ago are still present. Namely, the unequal axis of exchange that separates Latin America from the First World is still there. Latin America produces great art but has no authority to legitimize the art of other countries or regions. Its institutional infrastructure is very weak and riddled with problems. As my friend Gerardo Mosquera has pointed out, our countries have been relegated to the role of supplying artists to the global mall. Despite the success of contemporary art abroad, there is still a tendency to stereotype this art in Europe and the United States. The list goes on…. This situation places a great responsibility on curatorial practices to critically engage with this art and expose the contradictions in which it is operating. Because of the complex networks in which this art is inscribed, we cannot limit our intervention to the interpretation of the art itself; instead we must look at the whole picture that includes markets, museums, agents, exhibitions etc. because all of these factors today are inter-related. Research is fundamental for this task. There are still so many artists and movements in need of visibility and so many issues that need to be tackled.

The 2016 American election is imminent, and the rhetoric of the candidates – one in particular – has breached boundaries that we have not seen in generations (if ever). Sadly, Trump seems to have achieved some success through his transparently dishonest and hateful act of ‘othering.’ He is attacking cultures and people and is threatening to build a wall around the America. What do you make of the 2016 American election campaign, and do you see your work and the art you curate as more important than ever? 

Like many of my friends and colleagues, I find the dynamics of this campaign extremely troubling, if not scary. However, it is important to bear in mind that what is happening now has been in the making for decades and is the result of an ingrained bigotry and racism on the part of certain political parties and groups of this society that has been fueled by economic distress, rising inequality, ideological polarization and a host of other critical issues that self-interested political leaders have chosen to ignore. What scares me the most, however, are certain similarities it presents with Latin America where the rise and fall of authoritarianism has been part of the past and recent history of these nations. In the United States, however, the strength of democratic institutions has served until now to buffer us against this ugly monster. Yet we may now be witnessing the unthinkable: that monster rearing its head.

You are someone who is very sensitive and dynamic when it comes to portrayals of identity.  Your work plays with the audience self-portrait and conception of their own identity.  Often, your teachings and work are meant for an American audience.  Do you change anything when you visit and teach in Canada (or other countries)?  Are there things you must articulate to non-Americans for them to more firmly grasp American social constructs?

Yes, you always have to articulate or “translate” one situation into the other; when I am in the United States, I have to “translate” Latin American values to U.S. audiences and when I am in Latin America it is the other way around. The same applies to Europe, Canada, or wherever my work takes me since every culture is different. That is why, based on my own experience, I have characterized the function of the curator as that of a “broker” or “translator” of cultures. In this position you are not just converting words from one language to the other as part of your job but rather converting values intrinsic to one worldview into another. As a Puerto Rican—i.e. a bicultural colonial subject—I am well equipped for this task since my entire life has been a straddling back and forth between one culture (Puerto Rican) and a radically different “other” culture (U.S.).

What do you hope participants in your March 31^st workshop at �Ӱ�ԭ�� University will walk away with? What do you hope the audience takes away from your March 30th lecture at the National Gallery of Canada?

I hope the audience that attends the lecture will put to rest any stereotypes or misconceptions that they may have about Latin American or Latin American art and are intrigued enough by what I have to say to want to learn more about it. As to the workshop participants, I would like them to walk away with a more complex sense of the relationship between theory and practice as it plays out in curatorial practice. My entire trajectory of 35 years has been about putting big ideas to work in exhibitions, publications and other initiatives such as the International Center for the Arts of Americas (ICAA) and the ICAA Ideas Council, a research center and think-tank that I direct at the MFAH in Houston. For me, theory does not work if it cannot serve to stimulate or give concrete shape to actions.

Any exhibitions, places, people, pieces you’re particularly looking forward to visiting while you’re in Ottawa?

This is my second trip to Canada, a country I always wanted to visit. I lectured in Toronto in 2013 and was fascinated by the people and the city. In a curious way, I find that there are similarities between Canada and Latin America that relate to their peripheral status with regards to Europe and the United States. Issues of identity are also very strong here and on my visit to the National Gallery in Toronto I could see how much Canadian artists have wrestled with this issue since colonial times. So I am here with my husband, the Mexican architect, writer and curator, Héctor Olea, who also shares this interest in Canada. We are here to see as much as we can in terms of museums, galleries and other sites and to absorb everything that can help us understand this country and its culture. Thanks to Ming Tiampo we will also be visiting some artists studios which should be very exciting

Anything you’d like to add, Dr. Ramírez?

Thank you.

Shirley Thomson Memorial Lecture

Dr. Shirley Thomson (1930-2010) was a leading national figure in the promotion of the visual arts in Canada.  For more than 40 years she worked tirelessly in the arts community, establishing a distinguished record of accomplishment.  She served as Secretary-General of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO (1985-87), Director of the National Gallery of Canada (1987-97), Director of the Canada Council for the Arts (1998-2002), and Chair of the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board (2003-07). Dr. Thomson was a Companion of the Order of Canada and Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and Officer of Order of Ontario. Her strong and active presence was also felt in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa, where she served as an Adjunct Professor.

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2015/2016 Deadline: March 11, 2016

Render: The �Ӱ�ԭ�� Graduate Journal of Art and Culture is now accepting submissions for its 4th annual journal edition!

Papers must be at the graduate level and focus on an element of art and culture. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: visual art, music, theatre, dance, literature, performance, public history, and architecture.

For more submission guidelines, please visit Render’s website.

Please send the full paper along with a 250 word abstract to: render.journal@gmail.com

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Art History Prof. Ruth Phillips Receives CMA Lifetime Achievement Award

Professor of Art History, Ruth Phillips has been awarded the coveted American Anthropological Association – .

In the citation, the CMA recognized the impact of Phillips’s work in the field of museum anthropology, her “vision to create infrastructures…that connect people, artifacts and knowledge systems” and her work in mentoring and influencing the careers of students and colleagues.

Cross-appointed with the PhD program in Cultural Mediations in the , Prof. Phillips finds herself in familiar territory as the recipient of a prominent honour.

Phillips has held a since 2003. In 2012, her critically acclaimed book, , was shortlisted for the Donner Prize and won the in the non-fiction category. However, for Phillips, this award is a touch different.

“Although I didn’t set out to work in museums, I’ve divided my career between the very separate realms of museums and academia,” explained Phillips. “So, I was surprised and very honoured to receive an award which exclusively credits my museum work.”

Phillips was drawn into the museum world when she was asked to curate the Northeast component of The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada’s First Peoples held at the Glenbow Museum exhibition for the 1988 Olympics in Calgary. The international boycott of the exhibition organized in support of the unresolved Lubicon Cree land claim created a divisive and painful controversy but also led to the formation of a national Task Force on Museums and First Peoples. Phillips’s involvement with the debates, the exhibition and the task force made her aware of the potential of museums to build cross-cultural understanding and further social justice.

“I’ve always believed you learn more from controversy than smooth sailing. This was a period of enormous learning for me, and for many others in the museum world. It led, ultimately, to much more ethical and effective ways to work with culturally diverse communities.”

This knowledge was put to the test during her term as director of the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology. She remembers the exhibition she and the staff organized there in 2001 “The Spirit of Islam: Understanding Islam through Calligraphy” as one of the high points of her career.

The exhibition was planned years before the World Trade Centre attacks of September 11, 2001, but it opened a month later during a period when Muslims in the B.C. Lower Mainland felt very vulnerable. Overcoming these ominous circumstances, the exhibition was a stunning success and delivered a potent and positive message at a time when it was most needed. For Phillips, this was a bright light in her ongoing illustrious career.

“The ‘Spirit of Islam’ confirmed my belief in the power of museums to make a difference in society and to bring people together to correct misunderstandings, even under such terrible odds,” said Phillips.

Phillips’ contribution to the world of museums is multidimensional and has focused, in recent years, on the mobilization of digital technologies to provide access to Indigenous heritage scattered around the globe and to allow researchers to collaborate in virtual space. The CMA award recognizes her role in conceptualizing the UBC Museum of Anthropology’s Reciprocal Research Network and the digital database of the ), an organization she founded at �Ӱ�ԭ�� in 2005. Through GRASAC, Phillips and her colleagues have brought together researchers in Aboriginal communities, museums, and other universities around the world.

“I’ve always hoped to foster open access to museum collections, most of which were amassed during the colonial era. Democratizing access, especially for members of originating communities, is a contribution to decolonization.”

“Such projects can also help to fulfill some of the recommendations for cultural renewal in the Truth and Reconciliation report. Museums can be key partners in reaching this end, and Canadian museums are well positioned to be world leaders” she stressed.

Although working in the world of museums wasn’t a piece in her original career playbook, Phillips is grateful that curating and museum-based research became a significant part of her life.

“I love working in museums. In academia, you’re working from a distance, but in curating, there is a sense of closeness to the physical traces left to us by past lives and historical processes. I find this material connection deeply satisfying,” said Phillips. “and when it can be combined with projects that work toward social justice museum-based research becomes tremendously fulfilling. For me, there’s the activist side and the more personal and intimate side. I love them both.”

When one receives a lifetime achievement award, a natural response is to take pause and reflect. Phillips has certainly done this, but the award has also brought on the opposite – to think about the future of museum and curating work.

“For years I’ve seen digital media as having great potential to make museums even more accessible. We did this successfully at the Museum of Anthropology and we are currently trying to implement a digital strategy with GRASAC.”

“As we move towards this digitization, we need to continue in the spirit of partnership and collaborations with the relevant people, communities and organizations.”

In many ways, this spirit of collaboration is symbolic of Prof. Phillips curating career.

“Everything I’ve achieved to date has been with the help of other people. All of it has been through teamwork,” she said.

CMA is an all-volunteer membership organization that serves anthropologists and museum professionals. The Council for Museum Anthropology is a section of the American Anthropological Association. CMA’s mission is to foster the development of anthropology in the context of museums and related institutions.

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A few weeks ago in my regular blog, I observed that fall is the annual hunting season for those who enjoy stalking universities, and in particular for those who target the humanities. That hunt – which takes place in the media, the blogosphere, and elsewhere – was in fact noticeably less shrill and misinformed this year than in the past. But there was still more than enough hysteria to remind us that the B.A. remains misunderstood, undervalued and even demonized by plenty of people with loud voices.

The fundamental question raised by such critiques is, however, well worth asking. What good is a B.A.? Why do we believe that students should devote three or four years of their lives to getting one? What do we expect students to have at the end of the process that they wouldn’t have had otherwise?

I teach in �Ӱ�ԭ��’s . Like most programs, HTA offers a discipline-specific expertise to students. Our graduates will have learned about the history of the built environment, how it has been informed by human circumstances and aspirations, and how it in turn informed the humans who made it. They will be historically and visually literate, and know how to interpret the built environment as a historical document. This can lead to a host of rewarding careers in such fields as architecture, heritage, government, and other fields.

But the B.A. degree is every bit as valuable to those of our students who never end up working in any of these fields. That’s because what we teach is not just a body of knowledge, but a body of skills. We teach skills such as critical thinking, analysis of evidence, discovery of underlying principles, visual literacy and — perhaps most importantly — communication skills. These are what we call ‘transferable skills’, which is a fancy way of saying that they make you better at just about everything you do for the rest of your life.

This was vividly brought home to me a few weeks ago by a friend and neighbour of mine, Peter Gibaut. Peter did both a B.A. and an M.A. in medieval history. He didn’t study medieval history with any clear career strategy in mind. He did it because he loved it. Because he loved it he worked hard at it, and because he worked hard he became good at it. And by becoming good at it, he acquired a host of intellectual skills — skills that have turned out to be ideal preparation for his current career as an analyst for Policy Horizons Canada, a federal government agency that evaluates the effectiveness of current polices in light of expected future challenges. Here’s how Peter explained it to me (I should add that Peter speaks for himself, not for the civil service or the Government of Canada):

The study of history helps me professionally in two ways: first, it trained my mind to analyze complex systems with confidence; second, realizing how complicated understanding the past is taught me to have humility towards attempting to understand the present.

In my current job, I make evidence-based analyses on the long-term strategic robustness of public policy. Just as a historian weaves a range of disparate sources together to craft a compelling argument about a historical topic, working with policy requires me to weave a range of often seemingly unconnected sources together to create a compelling statement about the present and future. Historians are especially well trained to look at ‘big picture’ problems because we are trained to look at systems.

Part of the reason why Peter’s experience resonates so deeply with me is that it mirrors my own in many respects. My first degree was in English and Philosophy. My first full-time job was in specialty retail; I began in the back room, but as soon as my boss realized that I had useful communication and analytical skills, he moved me to the showroom to deal with customers — and gave me a raise. I eventually left that job to study photography. One doesn’t need to have a B.A. in the humanities to become a photographer, but my intellectual training gave me a significant edge over much of my cohort, both at school and later in the working world — photography, like pretty much any business, is an area where an analytical mind and good communication skills are the cornerstones of success. I haven’t worked in commercial photography for about twenty years now, but what I learned about visual communication (a skill, incidentally, that we work on in HTA) informs the teaching I do to this day. The point is that although I do not and never have worked in the field I studied in my B.A., that degree has made me significantly better at everything I have done since. It has been the foundation of all that followed, and I am enormously fortunate to have had that training.

In a job market that is a constantly moving target, the B.A. provides skills that are truly enduring. Students who aren’t certain where their degrees and careers will take them (and who is, at the age of 20?) should look ahead with confidence – they’re not just getting a degree, they’re getting an education.

–

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by Ming Tiampo

Art has the capacity to make the invisible visible, the unseen seen. To change the ways that we perceive reality. To tell stories where once there were only statistics, assumptions, numbers. To bring beauty and hope to mourning.

It has been an intense and stimulating week for me, one that reminds me of what a privilege it is to be a part of a vibrant university community. Last week, I brought a class of curatorial studies students to see . These are students who are learning the ins and outs of museum work—in a few words, how to make culture public. Our visit began with a smudge, to cleanse our eyes, ears, hearts, and minds so that we could see, hear and feel the good in what we were about to experience. Surrounded by air heavy with sweetgrass and sage, we listened with rapt attention as Thomas, the firekeeper, told us his residential school story, and reminded us how we are all connected, settlers and indigenous peoples alike. Walking through the memorial, we were overcome by the sheer number of vamps, or moccasin tops, assembled in memory of the missing and murdered indigenous women of Canada and the US. Occasionally, there would be a photograph, or a name. We noticed the care with which each one was made, the hundreds of beads individually sewn to each vamp with love, and understood the scale of loss. Surrounded by volunteers and a steady stream of visitors, we also saw the scale of awareness and healing that the installation brought to the community, promising the possibility of change.

A few days later, I drove to the airport to pick up Dr. Kobena Mercer, a professor of the History of Art and African American studies at Yale University. Mercer had been invited as a FASS Distinguished Visiting Professor by the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis, a research centre that was founded by Sarah Casteel, Catherine Khordoc and me in 2005, and which we now run with Malini Guha. Over the next two days, Mercer taught an undergraduate class in African Cinema, gave a keynote lecture to a packed lecture hall at the National Gallery of Canada, and headlined an equally full to capacity workshop. Be it in his discussion of a film about French theorist Roland Barthes’ colonial roots in Côte d’Ivoire, his account of three decades of Black Diaspora visual art, or his provocations about the internationalization of art history, I began to notice a pattern. Time and again, Mercer talked about art in ways that made the invisible visible, revealing the ways in which Europe and its former colonies are inextricably intertwined; two sides of the same coin that must be considered from both perspectives. Showing stunning work by artists such as Kara Walker and Isaac Julien, which critically retold the history of black diaspora, Mercer emphasized the potential of art to create dialogue and to make change, concluding, as did Herbert Marcuse, that “the truth of art lies in its power to break the monopoly of established reality.”

Walking back into St. Patrick’s building the next morning, I once again noticed the heady smell of sage and sweetgrass, and realized that everything around me had the potential to change. Everything down to the air that we breathe.

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