Extensive Indigenous art display adds shine to legislature’s Golden Boy Room

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This article was published 09/11/2023 (717 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The province has corralled 50 years worth of contemporary Indigenous art from offices throughout government buildings and put them on display in the formerly barren Golden Boy Room at the Manitoba Legislative Building.

It was a passion project for longtime Tory MLA and Speaker of the house Myrna Driedger, before her retirement from politics this year.

“We worked on setting up the Golden Boy Room with all this great Indigenous art, so that the building is more representative of parts of Manitoba,” said Driedger, who represented Roblin (formerly Charleswood) for 25 years, the last seven also in the role of Speaker.

“The Indigenous art has nothing to do with the Speaker, but it was something I wanted to do, and I got the approval from (the then-PC) government to go ahead.”

Far from being a glittering space for public meetings and events, the Golden Boy Room, located in the basement, had bare walls and not much to look at, Driedger said. “Nobody wanted to use the room because it had no atmosphere.”

Today, it’s a gallery, featuring works over the last half-century by well-known Indigenous artists from Manitoba.

Paintings and prints by Daphne Odjig and Jackson Beardy, founders of the Professional Native Indian Artists Inc., were purchased by the Manitoba government as early as 1968.

The government’s mission has been to collect works by Métis, First Nations and Inuit artists to celebrate their talents and display their diversity.

Odjig and Beardy played major roles in developing the Woodland school of painting, highlighted by primary colours, animal and nature themes, oral history and transformation, according to information posted in the Golden Boy Room.

Emerging, mid-career and established artists’ works are also on display, including: Carly Morrisseau’s digital prints about cultural continuity using Cree syllabics; KC Adam’s digital composite of birch-bark biting in a star quilt motif; Jackie Traverse’s celebration of women, culture and spirituality; and Linus Woods’s large-scale painting of rabbits and alien beings.

A piece by Marion Tuu’luq, an Inuit artist from Kamanituaq, shows the influence the diverse art forms and artists have had on the visual culture of Manitoba.

“To bring pieces together in a room, that will have much more impact than them being spread in different places,” Driedger said Thursday.

“This kind of tells a bit of a story,” she added. “I wanted to have something in the building that was more representative of our bigger history as a province.”

Amy Karlinsky, the government’s visual arts department consultant, along with summer interns in the sport, culture and heritage department, helped prepare the semi-permanent installation.

“It was just a great opportunity,” said Karlinsky. “The mandate of the government of Manitoba art collection is to put the works on public display for the appreciation of the Manitoba public.”

It also enhances the formerly quiet Golden Boy Room and makes it more appealing, said the former Speaker.

“As art lovers, you want to see something like this come together that has a bigger impact,” said Driedger. “When people come into the room now, this is very inspirational.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca