Gerald McMaster | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | March 9, 1953 |
| Nationality | Canadian, Siksika Nation |
| Occupation(s) | curator, artist |
Gerald Raymond McMaster CM (born 9 March 1953, in North Battleford) is a curator, artist, and author and a Plains Cree member of the Siksika Nation. [1] McMaster is a professor at OCAD University [2] and is the adjunct curator at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. [3]
Gerald McMaster was born in 1953 and grew up on the Red Pheasant First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan, Canada. His father is Blackfoot, while his mother is Plains Cree. He says he grew up listening to the Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy on the radio, while avidly reading western comic books – all of which would later influence his art. [1]
McMaster says, "I've been an urban Indian since the age of nine. I've attended art school in the United States, trained in the Western tradition; yet I am referred to as an 'Indian' artist. I have danced and sung in the traditional powwow style of Northern Plains, yet my musical tastes are global ..." [1]
McMaster studied art at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from 1973 to 1975. He earned his BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He earned his master's degree in Anthropology and Sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, [4] and continued his studies at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. [5]
McMaster draws and paints with humour and an ironic juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary pop culture elements. Identities, fluid and multiple, are central to his art practice. In his piece Eclectic Baseball, "traditional Plains Indian symbols of warfare and sacred ceremony were freely mixed with symbols and actual equipment of contemporary baseball". One of his best known series is The cowboy/Indian Show. [1] Hide painting, pictographs, and petroglyphs inspire his methods of representation. He works in oil and acrylic. [5]
In 1995, he ceased being a full-time artist in order to devote more time to curating, critical theory, and writing.
From 1977 to 1981, McMaster coordinated the Indian Art Program and was an instructor at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan. Beginning in 1981, he was curator of Contemporary Indian Art at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa. [4]
McMaster has curated a number of thought-provoking contemporary Native art shows, including INDIGENA at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. [6] In 2011, he curated with Ingo Hessel Inuit Modern at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. [7] In 1995, McMaster curated Edward Poitras's exhibition at the Biennale di Venezia . In 2005, Poitras, of Gordon First Nation, was the first aboriginal artist to represent Canada in the Biennale di Venezia. [8]
He served as the director's special assistant and deputy assistant director for cultural resources at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City from 2000 to 2004. He worked with the permanent collections there, as well as curating the shows, First American Art in 2004 and New Tribe/New York in 2005. [9]
He was curator of Canadian art at the Art Gallery of Ontario until 2012, when he was succeeded by Andrew Hunter. [10] [9]
In 2020, McMaster published a Iljuwas Bill Reid: life & Work through the Art Canada Institute. The book is one of the first comprehensive documentations of the artist's storied career and affinity for his indigenous heritage.
Rebecca Belmore is a Canadian interdisciplinary Anishinaabekwe artist who is notable for politically conscious and socially aware performance and installation work. She is Ojibwe and a member of Obishikokaang. Belmore currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.
The Red Pheasant Cree Nation is a Plains Cree First Nations band government in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The band's sole reserve, Red Pheasant 108, is 33 km (21 mi) south of North Battleford.
This is a chronological list of significant or pivotal moments in the development of Native American art or the visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Earlier dates, especially before the 18th century, are mostly approximate.
Bonnie Devine is a Serpent River Ojibwa installation artist, performance artist, sculptor, curator, and writer from Serpent River First Nation, who lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. She is currently an associate professor at OCAD University and the founding chair of its Indigenous Visual Cultural Program.
Alfred Young Man, Ph.D. or Kiyugimah is a Cree artist, writer, educator, and an enrolled member of the Chippewa-Cree tribe located on the Rocky Boy Indian Reservation, Montana, US. His Montana birth certificate lists him as being 13/16th Cree by blood-quantum, his full sister, Shirley, is listed as 16/16ths. He is a former Department Head (2007–2010) of Indian Fine Arts at the First Nations University of Canada in Regina, Saskatchewan and former Chair (1999–2007) of Native American Studies, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Lethbridge and University of Regina.
America Meredith is a painter, curator, educator, and editor of First American Art Magazine. America Meredith is an artist and comes from a Swedish-Cherokee background who blends pop imagery from her childhood with European and Native American styles.
Ingo D. W. Hessel is a Canadian art historian and curator specializing in Inuit Art. The author of Inuit Art: An Introduction, Hessel has curated exhibitions for the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, the Museum of Inuit Art in Toronto, and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.
Jane Ash Poitras is a Cree painter and printmaker from Canada. Her work uses the idioms of mainstream art to express the experience of Aboriginal people in Canada.
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Sherry Farrell Racette is a First Nations feminist scholar, author, curator, and artist. She is best known for her contributions to Indigenous and Canadian art histories. She is currently an associate professor of Visual Arts at the University of Regina.
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Michelle LaVallee is a Canadian curator, artist, and educator. She is Ojibway and a member of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation in Cape Croker, Ontario. She has BFA (2000) and BEd (2004) degrees from York University in Toronto.
Morgan Wood is a curator and artist who is Stony Mountain Cree. Her family is from the Michel Callihou Band in Alberta and her great-grandmother was Victoria Callihou. Wood received a Bachelor of Indian Art from the First Nations University of Canada, at the University of Regina in Regina, Saskatchewan.
Barry Ace is a First Nations sculptor, installation artist, photographer, multimedia artist, and curator from Sudbury, Ontario, who lives in Ottawa. He is Odawa, an Anishinaabe people, and belongs to the M'Chigeeng First Nation.
Rosalie Favell is a Métis (Cree/British) artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba currently based in Ottawa, Ontario, working with photography and digital collage techniques. Favell creates self-portraits, sometimes featuring her own image and other times featuring imagery that represents her, often making use of archival photos of family members and images from pop culture.
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Michael Parke-Taylor is an independent art historian and curator who worked at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto in various positions for twenty-three years, retiring as Curator of Modern Art in 2011. He has published widely and is a collector of popular culture. In 2024, he curated the retrospective exhibition and wrote the accompanying book for the exhibition Bertram Brooker: When We Awake! at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg. He lives in Toronto.
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