Hiding the Audience: Viewing Arts and Arts Institutions on the Prairies

Hiding the Audience examines how the development of Canadian prairie arts institutions in the context of an implicitly Euro- or Anglo-Canadian audience clashed with the creation of regional arts that needed to acknowledge a Native Canadian presence to flourish. It looks in detail at the regional versus international strains in the history of the Banff Centre, at the development of the Glenbow Museum and the controversy over the "Spirit Sings" exhibition, at the two decades of contention regarding statues of Louis Riel in Regina and Winnipeg, and at the contrasts in audience participation in two of 25th Street Theatre's productions, one about farmers and the other about Metis people. Primarily a work of cultural history, this study uses archival sources, post-colonial theory, and the theories implied in the fiction of Cherokee author Thomas King to probe the ways in which the whitestream assumptions of the individuals who institutionalized the arts on the Prairies hid both a Native audience and the kinds of issues and presentations such an audience might reasonably expect to see--and that might help make the settler audience understand the responsibilities of becoming native to this place. The interdisciplinary nature of the book makes it useful to scholars in Native Studies, Museum Studies, Art History, Theatre, and English, as well as to arts administrators and patrons, art lovers, and artists.