Canadian curator and artist Gerald McMaster (Nêhiyaw Plains Cree and Siksika Nation Citizen) on his extensive curatorial/art practice and his respective work in the Wheelwright Museum’s current exhibition Laughter and Resilience: Humor in Native American Art. Dr. McMaster is curator, artist, author, and professor – is Tier 1 Canada Research of Indigenous Visual Culture and Curatorial Practice and director of the Wapatah: Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge at OCAD University.
Dr. McMaster has over 30 years of international work and expertise in contemporary art, critical theory, museology, and Indigenous aesthetics, working at such institutions as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and the Canadian Museum of Civilization. His experience as an artist and curator in art and ethnology museums researching and collecting art as well as producing exhibitions has given him a thorough understanding of transnational Indigenous visual knowledge and curatorial practice. Chosen to represent Canada as curator for the Edward Poitras exhibition at the prestigious Venice Biennale (1995) and then 18 Indigenous architects at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2018). In 2010, he was the Canadian Commissioner to Biennale of Sydney; and in 2012 he was Artistic Director to the 18th Biennale of Sydney. He studied fine arts at the Institute of American Indian Art (Santa Fe, New Mexico) and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (BFA 1977). After receiving his MA in anthropology from Carleton University, he went on to defend his doctoral dissertation The New Tribe: Critical Perspectives and Practices in Aboriginal Contemporary Art at the University of Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Theory, and Interpretation (1999).