From “stardust” to statecraft: The Canada Council for the Arts and the evolution of Canadian cultural diplomacy
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702020935147 |
| Author | Evan Potter |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essay |
Scholarly Essay
From “stardust” to
statecraft: The Canada
Council for the Arts and
the evolution of Canadian
cultural diplomacy
Evan Potter
University of Ottawa, Canada
Abstract
If culture is the lynchpin of public diplomacy, then the Canada Council for the Arts (the
Council) has had an important role in projecting Canada’s international image, identity,
and values beyond its borders for over 60 years. This article explores the evolution of
the Council’s role in Canada’s cultural diplomacy, from its birth as a result of the Massey
Commission’s recommendations to its growing international role in projecting Canada’s
diversity in a contemporary international context. The article argues that the Council’s
growing international role, one that promotes cultural freedom, will strengthen
Canada’s foreign policy and may portend a unique form of “bottom-up” Canadian
cultural statecraft that is distinct from the traditional “top-down” forms of political
and economic statecraft.
Keywords
Cultural diplomacy, soft power, Canada, Canada Council for the Arts, public diplomacy,
cultural statecraft
Corresponding author:
Evan Potter, University of Ottawa, Department of Communication, Desmarais Building, 55 Laurier Avenue
East, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5, Canada.
Email: epotter@uottawa.ca
International Journal
2020, Vol. 75(2) 199–219
!The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702020935147
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When Canada inaugurated its new embassy and Canadian Cultural Centre on the
rue du Faubourg Saint-Honor
e in Paris in 2018, visitors may have been surprised
to encounter Indigenous artist Kent Monkman’s provocative Miss Chief’s Wet
Dream, a massive, eight-metres wide, painting that depicts his fierce and flamboy-
ant two-spirited alter ego, “Miss Chief Eagle Testickle,” in a canoe steered by
Indigenous people about to collide with G
ericault’s revered Raft of the Medusa.
1
Monkman’s reinterpretation of a seminal moment in French history and art lays
bare France’s collusion in the colonization of Indigenous peoples at the same time
as it imagines a cultural “collision” in which Indigenous culture is robustly pre-
pared to confront its ailing European counterpart. It is not without significance
that Canada’s embassy in France, one of its pre-eminent diplomatic posts, did not
choose a “safe” exhibit of twentieth-century artists’ paintings to inaugurate its
new cultural centre in a country that reveres culture. Instead, the Canadian
Cultural Centre in Paris, in partnership with the Mus
ee des Confluences in
Lyon, selected the internationally acclaimed Cree artist to make a point. In the
words of Manon Dumas, the Cultural Centre’s director, “Here we have two major
themes that are screaming out at us: LGBTQ [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
and questioning (or queer)] rights and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.”
2
For the embassy’s public affairs officers, the seemingly perfect confluence of two
major public policy priorities of the Trudeau government in this art exhibit
allowed for their further amplification through a program of lectures and panel
discussions. Nor did Canada’s artistic expression stop at the Cultural Centre’s
door; rather, artwork by Indigenous and queer-identified artists are woven
throughout the embassy’s diplomatic space. To be sure, in the post-Second
World War period, the Canadian government has exhibited Indigenous art and
culture at the World Expos, Olympic Games, and at its embassies, highlighting to
international audiences the distinct voices and identities of Indigenous peoples in
Canadian society and history. That being said, encountering a teepee at a tempo-
rary Canada House in the Olympic Village or a totem pole in the Chapultepec Park
in Mexico City is more likely to feed ethnographic stereotypes held by foreigners
about the Indigenous experience than it is to spark critical reflection; viewing
Monkman’s “reverse colonization of European painting,”
3
however, lifts
Canada’s cultural diplomacy to a new level of critical self-awareness and trans-
parency, forcing an interrogation of conventional settler narratives. It also high-
lights the role played by the Canada Council for the Arts (referred to as the
1. Sandra Abma, “New Canadian embassy woos the French with Indigenous art,” CBC News, 23 June
2018, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/paris-embassy-culture-canada-art-indigenous-1.
4712383 (accessed 21 May 2019). See also “Beauty and the Beast, Kent Monkman,” Centre
Culturel Canadien, 17 May 2018–5 September 2018, https://canada-culture.org/en/event/kent-
monkman (accessed 21 May 2019).
2. Sandra Abma, “New Canadian Embassy woos the French with Indigenous art.”
3. Catherine Bedard, Canadian Cultural Centre curator, as quoted in Sandra Abma, “New Canadian
Embassy woos the French with Indigenous art.”
200 International Journal 75(2)
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