Apologies for my extended blogging absence, but I’m just back from a long weekend in Montreal. There were a couple things on the must-do list; a performance by the Montréal Symphony Orchestra that was one of the best concerts I’ve ever attended (conductor Rafael Payare, a native of Venezuela, is a treasure), and the biggest single exhibit ever mounted of Kent Monkman, who’s an extraordinary craftsman and storyteller on canvas. It’s on display until March 8 at the Montréal Musée des Beaux-Arts, and I strongly recommend you make the trip if you can.

Monkman is a First Nations (Cree) artist who creates monumental canvases that remix the tropes and styles of Western art, inserting narratives that center the native peoples of North America. In the process, he exposes the unspoken social and political messages of “non-political” Western art.

Mounting this exhibition is a major accomplishment for Monkman and the MMBA, but given the fact that it took years of planning and effort, no one could have foreseen just how devastatingly apropos it would be in this historical moment. Seeing centuries of white colonials violently suppressing and attempting to erase Native people and culture, at a time when our government is conducting a taxpayer-funded war on brown people, makes Monkman look like not only a world-class artist, but a prophet as well.

So yeah, it’s worth a visit.

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