STONE PARLIAMENT OF ART: Significant, Indigenous, Artist, Scholar, Writer and Curator

Image by Angus Rowe MacPherson

Stone Parliament of Art would like to introduce Gerry McMaster, one of Canada's finest and most distinguished artists. You'll be hearing more from McMaster soon! He's just been named as one of the curators of Nuit Blanche 2010 and will curate the area in and around Yorkville, from Yonge Street to Avenue Road. You may remember our picture of this area.

Gerald R. McMaster, a Plains Cree, was born on the Red Pheasant Reserve in 1953. He is a significant figure in contemporary Indigenous art in Canada because of his work as an artist, writer, curator, and prominent scholar. As an artist he works in both two-dimensional and installation media, using humour and irony to convey his comments on colonialism and stereotypes of plains First Nations.

In 1981 McMaster was appointed Curator of Contemporary Indian Art and subsequently became Curator-in-Charge of the First Peoples Hall, at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. He created such important exhibitions as In the Shadow of the Sun (1988), INDIGENA (1992), and Reservation X (1999). Since 2000 he has worked for the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. McMaster began his education at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and recently received a PhD from the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis. From 1977 to 1981 he was coordinator of the Indian Art Program at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College (now First Nations University of Canada).