Statistical Imperat ives: Representing the Nation in Exhibitions of Contemporary Art

A national institution with a federal mandate to promote Canada's artistic heritage, the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) has long situated itself as the organism that has best fostered the production of art in Canada. As the recent Group of Seven retrospective reminds us, the importance of producing "Art for a Nation" ' has remained the uncontested realm of the National Gallery since its inception. The basis for this support of Canadian art has rest-ed on the pursuit of a distinctly Canadian aesthetic of the kind characterised by the works of the Group of Seven and their followers. This search for a unique Canadian art form has been less apparent in contemporary art as changes in the nature of artistic production itself and in the art market, as well as in recent re-examinations of conceptions of Canadian nationhood, have made the mono-lithic conception of nationhood that underscored such a quest virtually impos-sible. Language and regionalism figure as two attempts in exhibition policy and practice to move outside or beyond a singular vision of national identity in Canada. These tropes in turn get re-invoked in critiques of exhibitions and of acquisitions of contemporary art by the NGC. Even if cultural nationalism is a dead horse (Crean 1996), the seeking out of identity- whether it is defined as singular or plural- continues to underscore the majority of conceptions of Canadian culture in the public sphere. This essay will examine the NGC's treatment of nationhood and Canadian art through an analysis of two group exhibitions of contemporary art on display a