In late 1984 or early 1985, Norval Morrisseau arrived, without warning, at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery—larger than life, anchored in experience, and announcing simply that he had “stopped by... because I happened to be in the neighborhood.” Staff, both old and new, gathered to welcome him. Despite the seemingly random nature of his visit, his presence that day was significant. It was a gesture the artist extended to the gallery’s Centre for Indigenous Art and for those of us who worked there, that reminded us of his stature in the region, his importance to the practices and work of the centre, and of the profound shift that his legacy was bringing about in the retelling of the story of a nation.

By the time the Thunder Bay National Exhibition Centre and Centre for Indian Art—today, the Thunder Bay Art Gallery—opened in the fall of 1982, Norval Morrisseau was already a legend. Famously, in 1962, his first show at Toronto’s Pollock Gallery had been a sell-out. In 1970, he’d been named to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, in 1978, he had received the Order of Canada; and in 1980, an honorary PhD from Hamilton’s McMaster University. More accolades would follow post-1982, but suffice it to say, he was famous by then and widely credited as the “founder of a new art movement—the woodlands school.” Norval Morrisseau would be a key artistic father and anchor for the work of Centre for Indian Art, nestled as it is in the traditional lands of the Anishnaabe of northwestern Ontario and with its mandate to focus on Indigenous art.

At the time of its opening, the centre was unique in the Canadian museological landscape. Modern and/or contemporary Indigenous art in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s had been relegated largely to a circuit of art and ethnography museums in western Canada, notably the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary; and University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. These institutions, however, varied from the centre as they did not have a singular focus on the collection and exhibition of Indigenous Art but were much more eclectic in their programming and collecting.

Fine art institutions in central Canada continued to champion mainstream western modernism into the 1990s. They saw modern First Nations art as falling outside their mandates—as culturally generic rather than the product of individual creative genius. In 1984, for example, the groundbreaking exhibition Norval Morrisseau and the Emergence of the Image Makers opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Curated by Tom Hill (1943–2023) and Elizabeth McLuhan, the show situated Morrisseau’s work within a larger group of artists including Daphne Odjig (1919–2016), Carl Ray (1943–1978), Joshim Kakegamic (1952–1993), Roy Thomas (1949–2004), Saul Williams (b.1954), and Blake Debassige (b.1956). These artists followed Morrisseau’s lead stylistically, using novel visual and narrative conventions to create their own expressions. While both Kay Kritzwiser of the Globe and Mail and Nancy Bael of the Ottawa Citizen viewed this exhibition favourably, the museum’s chief curator was quoted in the Globe and Mail as saying that the art shown in the exhibition was inappropriate for an institution such as this and that the show had come about only because of “political pressures.”

There were those, however, who were fighting against this attitude. Among them were Yves Theriault, George Manuel, and the organizers of the 1967 Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 67; Jacqueline Fry, curator of the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s 1972 exhibition, Treaty Numbers 23, 287, 1171; and, of profound importance in their introduction of a new era of critical and revisionist curatorial work—Robert Houle (b.1947) and Bob Boyer (1948–2004), curators of the groundbreaking 1982 exhibition, New Work by a New Generation at the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery.

It was at this moment that Thunder Bay’s new Centre for Indigenous Art entered the Canadian museological landscape. The application of a revisionist and inclusive art historical methodology to the work of Morrisseau, that is, a critical new art history emerging globally, one that defined Morrisseau as an artist not an ethnographic phenomenon, was long overdue. He was not only the region’s senior artist but one who had been fighting for two decades to have modern First Nations art accepted as fine art. At the same time, the local Anishinaabe communities recognized his importance and influence in the Thunder Bay area by appointing him in 1986 “Grand Shaman of the Ojibwe.” Their relationship to the artist would impact the collection and exhibition practices of the centre.

Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Years 1982–1985

The Thunder Bay Art Gallery has collected Morrisseau’s work since its inception. Early in its institutional history, it acquired four stellar works on kraft paper done in the 1960s through the generosity of Mrs. Jil Campling, Mrs. Greer, and John and Stella Evans. In 1985, the gallery accepted forty-one works, most paintings on canvas, all but two of which came from a single anonymous donor. Other important works were donated by Helen Band in 1994. This latter collection of Morrisseau’s work enabled the gallery to mount a thirty-year retrospective exhibition in 2010 and another show of recent acquisitions in 2016.

Beyond the Thunder Bay Art Gallery

The curators of the National Exhibition Centre and Centre for Indian Art also contributed to two exhibitions organized by other institutions that confirmed the position of Morrisseau on the national and international fine art stages: Norval Morrisseau & the Emergence of the Images Makers, presented by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in 1984, and In the Shadow of the Sun: Perspectives on Contemporary Native Art, held at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in 1988. The significance of Tom Hill and Elizabeth McLuhan’s curatorial work on the AGO’s exhibition cannot be overstated. It was a landmark show that presented a revisionist history, challenged curatorial stereotypes and limitations, and helped to break down the barriers posed by the long-held gatekeeping practices of the art establishment. McLuhan and Hill charted a new course forward.

Norval Morrisseau’s enduring legacy, as represented and fostered by the activities of the Centre for Indian Art in Thunder Bay, came about as the result of a confluence of events—the fame he had achieved by 1982, his unwavering dedication to the lasting relevance of his people’s traditions, the Centre for Indigenous Art’s decision to develop its programs with local Indigenous community input, the blueprint provided by Robert Houle’s essay in the catalogue for New Work by a New Generation, Tom Hill’s rewriting of an Indigenous art history in Canada in his essay for the 1984 AGO exhibition, and the broader forces for change afforded by the decade of the 1980s. Socially and politically, the times were changing for Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and for art history in the halls of academia. Taken together, these incidences and occurrences would place the Thunder Bay’s Centre for Indian Art at the headwaters of a new era in the exhibition of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada.

For the gallery and the centre, Morrisseau was the catalyst. He was the “Indigenous master,” playing a role similar to that of artists like Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) and Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) in their time. In Morrisseau’s case, his example offered fellow artists, scholars, museums, and the broader public an opportunity to reconsider the central place of First Nations art within the history of Canadian art.