Commonwealth _Canada _ The National Gallery of Canada has a new CEO and director, the Museum of Art said on Wednesday. The National Gallery’s director, Jean-François Bélisle, will take office on July 17 and begin a five-year tenure. Angela Cassie, who has served as CEO and temporary director since June 2022, is succeeded him.
Bélisle held the positions of executive director and head curator at the Musée d’art de Joliette in Quebec before being hired. He has been a manager in the field of visual arts since the middle of the 1990s, according to a statement from the National Gallery.
According to Bélisle’s statement, “I think that art can influence society and look forward to working with the gallery’s employees, as well as artists from throughout the country, to guarantee that our institution continues to be a tremendous force for good.
The national gallery will be able to take the lead in Canadian visual arts under Bélisle’s direction, and more Canadian artists will be visible on the global art scene. The National Gallery of Canada has been under public fire and scrutiny over the last two years from both current and former employees.
The Ottawa art museum was let rid of four senior employees in November 2022, including Greg Hill, the longstanding curator of Indigenous art. After being fired, Hill released a message on social media in which he expressed his “deep dismay” at the “colonial and anti-Indigenous ways the Department of Indigenous Ways and Decolonization is being run.”
Later that month, seven former gallery employees sent an open letter to Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez expressing their dissatisfaction with the personnel changes. A “high degree of internal uncertainty and instability” had been generated within the gallery, according to the letter, as a result of the recent departures and earlier terminations.
The gallery was inviting new members who had been “historically excluded from this institution,” Cassie, who was the interim director at the time. She said that the staff departures highlighted a desire for change.
