Abstract

This thesis studies the exhibition Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal Artists that ran from Fall 2008 to Spring 2009 at the National Gallery of Canada in collaboration with the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. Curated by Steven Loft, a Mohawk-Jewish curator in his second year of a two-year curator-in-residence program at the National Gallery, and Andrea Kunard, a non-Native curator at the CMCP, the exhibition featured portraits by twelve First Nations and Métis artists.
Steeling the Gaze challenged curatorial and institutional authority at the National Gallery of Canada. The exhibition was a collaborative project on many levels, and was a major advance on the part of the CMCP and the NGC, and the curators working there, because it challenged conventional modes of display of work by Indigenous artists. The exhibition shifted several protocols about curatorial and institutional authority. One of the main contributions of Steeling the Gaze was its exploration of collaboration across many different realms – curatorial, institutional, curator-artist relations, and artist-artist relations. My thesis will examine the collaborative practices employed in Steeling the Gaze and will consider how this approach could be a useful model for exhibitions of Aboriginal art in mainstream art institutions.