On Wednesday former Canadian Art Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher David Blazer published in Hyperallergic an article on/called "The Persistence of Structural Racism in Canadian Cultural Institutions." He's right, of course. Hard to fuck that one up. But apart from some sentences detailing the horrors of corporate sponsorship, he does.
Yesterday Canadian Art published "A Letter" by its staff stating that Balzer "implicated" them "without [their] consent," and in doing so "reproduces the structures being critiqued, including white arts leaders capitalizing on the labour of BIPOC staff," one of whom took to Twitter, not with threats but with promises:
A couple things: Did the editors of Hyperallergic fact-check Balzer's article with Canadian Art staff, or was this article intended as a surprise? Not nice if it was. Also, Canadian Art concludes its letter with a strange paragraph:
How is it that a letter such as this can conclude with the magazine "pausing [its] online publishing." Shouldn't a "pausing" occasion another letter (like the one we never received explaining why Canadian Art wasn't publishing a Summer issue)? Canadian Art's online publishing began gearing down months ago; more recently it has trickled. Yet never before (since the closing of museums and galleries in March) has its non-exhibition-based, infrastructural-interrogative content felt so necessary, so relevant.
What is going on at Canadian Art?
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