Afternoons at the Institute - Making Paul Kane Useful: A Critical Conversation about Paul Kane’s Travels in Indigenous North America

The Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art invites you to a conversation about Ian MacLaren’s four-volume publication, Paul Kane’s Travels in Indigenous North America: Writings and Art, Life and Times (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024). With painstaking archival research and close analysis of Kane’s field notes and sketches, MacLaren has cleared away the myths and misconceptions surrounding the artist’s documentary record. Critic Kate Taylor lists the discoveries and contributions to knowledge of MacLaren’s monumental publication yet feels compelled to ask: “Given the problems with Kane’s work, you might wonder why study him at all” (Globe and Mail, 10 Aug. 2024). This round table will pursue that very question. Our speakers will be Richard Hill (Vancouver Art Gallery), Ian MacLaren (University of Alberta), and Anne Whitelaw (Concordia University). Stéphanie Hornstein (Concordia University) will moderate the discussion.

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Richard William Hill, is the Smith-Jarislowsky Senior Curator of Canadian Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery. He has worked as a curator, critic and art historian for over three decades. He was Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design from 2015 until December, 2021. Prior to this, he was associate professor at York University, teaching courses in art history, curatorial practice and graduate research methods. Hill began his curatorial career at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where, with Dr. Anna Hudson, he oversaw the museum’s first substantial efforts to collect historic Indigenous North American art and display it in the permanent collection galleries.

Ian MacLaren is professor emeritus at the University of Alberta where he held a joint appointment in the departments of History & Classics and English & Film Studies. A prolific scholar and inspirational teacher, he has authored or and edited several books, including Paul Kane’s Travels in Indigenous North America: Writing and Art, Life and Times (McGill-Queens, 2024) Arctic Artist: The Journal and Paintings of George Back, Midshipman with Franklin 1819–1822 (McGill-Queens, 1994) and The Ladies, the Gwich’in and the Rat: Travels on the Athabasca, Mackenzie, Rat, Porcupine, and Yukon Rivers in 1926 (University of Alberta Press, 1998).

Anne Whitelaw is Provost and Vice-president Academic and professor in the department of Art History at Concordia University in Montreal. Her areas of expertise include Canadian cultural policy, cultural institutions, and practices of exhibition and display. She is the author of Spaces and Places for Art: Making Art Institutions in Western Canada 1912-1990 (McGill-Queens 2017) and co-editor with Beverly Lemire and Laura Peers of Object Lives and Global Histories in Northern North America: Material Culture in Motion (McGill-Queens 2021). Her current research examines the work of volunteer women’s societies in North American art museums.

Stéphanie Hornstein is a PhD candidate in the department of Art History at Concordia University. Her doctoral research is concerned with how the Orientalist imagination is expressed in early photographic representations of Japan and Egypt. Her writing has appeared in History of Photography, Ciel variable, and RACAR.