Spring brings two new exhibits to Banff’s Whyte Museum

Banff National Park on Friday, July 21, 2017. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh)

BANFF – In the underground vault of the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Curator Crystal Mowry digs through a medley of artwork and pieces together a story that would shape the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies’ latest exhibit.

Exploring themes of power, connection, secrecy and trust through pieces from the Regina, Saskatchewan gallery’s permanent collection, the touring exhibit, Thick as Thieves, made its way to Banff on May 1 as part of the Whyte Museums’ summer exhibitions.

 “It’s really special to see the exhibition here in the mountains because the mountains can feel a bit secretive too,” said Mowry, curator of the exhibit and director of programs at the MacKenzie Art Gallery, noting the idea of secrecy plays into many of the exhibit’s works.

• The information you need to know, sent directly to you: Download the CTV News App

The exhibit spans the sculpture work of late 19th-century artist Auguste Rodin that reflects on desire and love, to interactive pieces like a wall-sized installation by Canadian contemporary artist August Klintberg.

“This is a bit of a motley crew of works, the earliest works in the exhibition are from over a 100 years ago,” said Mowry, noting only a few of the works in the exhibit are from outside of the gallery’s collection.

Mowry says many of the exhibit’s works reflect on power in some form, diving into how the wealthy or affluent may “keep their social circles tight,” for example.

“In other cases, you might see examples like the Guerilla Girls posters, which come out of a period of a kind of anonymous protest where they were shining the light on how museums exclude certain voices or certain perspectives by virtue of how they program and who they have on their governance boards,” she added, noting another perspective showcased in the exhibit.

A stop motion animation by artist Amanda Strong takes those themes even further, Mowry adds.

“Objects within museums do not all belong there, like there are examples of objects that have been stolen or that have arrived in locations through nefarious means,” she said.

“I think what Amanda’s work teaches us is that even theft can embody some promise and there’s potential for repair in that.”

Drawing a common thread between each piece when creating the exhibit, Mowry hopes that viewers think about what information is left out of stories as they wander through the collection.

“I’d love for [people] to reflect on what gets excluded or redacted from stories that are collectively shared,” she said.

Showcased alongside Thick as Thieves and created from the Whyte’s own collection, When our eyes touch is a look into the portraiture of Peter Whyte and Catharine Robb Whyte, founders of the Whyte Museum.

“Perhaps for some locals, there’s a feeling that we’ve seen a lot of Peter and Catharine’s work before, that their art has been showcased at the Whyte, and I just feel like this is a really fresh view. It has a depth to it,” said Dagny Dubois, one of the exhibit’s curators and Indigenous-related collections specialist at the Whyte.

Starting in 1925 with paintings from Peter and Catharine’s time at art school in Boston, the work traces the couple’s move to Banff where the subjects of their portraits shift to community members, including many from Stoney Nakoda First Nation.

“They rented a cabin out in Mînî Thnî and set to work painting people, for I want to say about a week or 10 days, … and so we have this amazing collection of portraits from that trip to Stoney Nation,” added Christina Cuthbertson, chief operating officer and curator at the museum.

While preparing the exhibit, Dubois says the Whyte’s Hosting Indigenous Community Relations team set up several portraits at the Bearspaw Youth Centre in Mînî Thnî, looking to see if anyone recognized Îyârhe (Stoney) Nakoda community members in the paintings.

“We just felt it was really important that the community know that we were doing this and maybe they didn’t know that some of their ancestors were depicted in paintings by Peter and Catharine,” said Dubois.

During the engagement, one of the unknown portrait subjects was recognized and named.

“That’s just been quite a powerful process for us to bring more dignity back to these sitters,” Dubois added.

Accompanied by Catharine’s journal excerpts and letters written to each other, the exhibit also takes a deeper look at Peter and Catharine’s love and partnership as artists.

“You can sometimes see them painting the same person, but from a slightly different angle, so you can almost imagine them sitting next to each other,” said Dubois. “It’s quite remarkable.”

While the summer exhibits run separate, the two share a connection, says Cuthbertson.

“When you come into an institution and you are now charged with caring for a collection there’s a lot of responsibility in that, there’s a lot of creativity in that and there’s even burden sometimes when that collection has become difficult over time for various reasons and both exhibitions are really grappling with that, both exhibitions are coming from that place,” she said.

Thick as Thieves and When Our Eyes Touch are on display at the Whyte Museum until Nov. 8.

“I think what is really special about seeing this exhibition here, is seeing it alongside other efforts that are afoot within the museum to really reflect carefully on collecting practices, how museums build collections and I’m really honoured to have this exhibition alongside other projects that the Whyte Museum is undertaking through that lens,” Mowry added.

The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada. This position covers Îyârhe (Stoney) Nakoda First Nation and Kananaskis Country.