This thesis compares two contemporary artists who practice institutional criticism, Marcel Broodthaers and Fred Wilson. Looking specifically at Broodthaers's fictional museum project the Musee d Art Moderne, Departement des Aigles from 1968-1972 and Wilson's 1992 installation Mining the Museum at the Maryland Historical Society, this thesis will critically analyze each artist's similar application of deconstruction as a method. Both artists employ allegory and history as aesthetic strategies of deconstruction; using allegorical structure, the artists mobilize objects that have been arrested in history, disrupting a historical continuum that would otherwise remain foreclosed. The focus of this study will be to explore the critical approaches of Broodthaers and Wilson individually as well as the similar theoretical tendencies of the artists jointly; this investigation will assess the effect of institutional criticism on the museum's present condition, unfolding both what has changed and what is still at play within this practice.

This thesis investigates Western exhibition practices and the problems that arise when they involve cross-cultural encounters. Two exhibitions of Chinese painting in Paris that were co-planned by French curators and Chinese artists will serve as case studies in this regard. The first exhibition is Exposition de la peinture chinoise held at the Musee du Jeu de Paume in 1933. The second show is Quatre artistes chinoises contemporaines held at the Musee Cernuschi in 1977. Using archival material, I will reconstruct the planning of the exhibitions and reveal diverging French and Chinese agendas. An examination of the press reviews of the two shows will demonstrate that location is key in the public reception of an exhibition. The analysis of the encounter of self and other underlying the two exhibitions will lead to a probing of Western exhibition practices and bring issues of power, authenticity and identity-making to the fore.

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The history of collection at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, illustrates concepts of race in the development of museums in Canada from before Confederation to today. Located at intersections of Art History, Museology, Postcolonial Studies and Native Studies, this thesis uses discourse theory to trouble definitions of nation and problematize them as inherently racial constructs wherein 'Canadianness' is institutionalized as a dominant white, Euro-Canadian discourse that mediates belonging. The recent reinstallations of the permanent Canadian historical art galleries at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts are significant in their illustration of contemporary colonial collection practices. The effectiveness of each installation is discussed in relation to the demands and resistances raised by Indigenous and non-Native artists and cultural professionals over the last 40 years, against racist treatment of Indigenous arts.

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