Abstract

This thesis examines museums’ spatial politics in the representation of Indigenous art history questioning the affects and effects of architecture on visitors’ experience and interpretation of museum narratives. The body of research my analysis draws from focuses primarily on theories of space and spatial organization, architecture, and design, as well as histories of settler colonialism and the racialization of bodies and knowledge through modes of rationalization. Looking carefully at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion, I attend to the ways in which the collection of Inuit art housed on the fourth-floor galleria is made inconsequential and how the space enacts a disservice to the artworks and artists presented, supporting national colonial imaginaries anchored in settler colonialism. My inquiry is first and foremost informed by a decolonial theoretical framework. This thesis attempts at decolonizing my own knowledge and asking how and if the Inuit art collection on the last floor of the Claire and Marc Bourgie pavilion allows for decolonizing knowledge. I contend that experiences of this space speak to bigger and more complex issues of representation and decolonization in cultural institutions and respond to larger discourses critical of institutional and socio-political realities. Accordingly, I recognize the dual relationship between museum institutions—their physical spaces and the objects displayed—and the visitors, along with the active role of each in making sense of what is being presented, constructing, and organizing knowledge. I question the information and insights offered by the materials and objects and the relationships they facilitate. In sum, I ask: what knowledge is made available? How does this knowledge relate to the lived realities and the histories of the cultures put on display?