Gerald R. McMaster (born 1953) is a Plains Cree and Blackfoot curator, artist, and author. He is enrolled in the Siksika First Nation.[1] Currently he lives in Toronto, Canada and is curator of Canadian art at the Art Gallery of Ontario.[2]
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Gerald McMaster was born in 1953 and grew up on the Red Pheasant First Nation reserve in Saskatchewan, Canada. His father is Blackfoot, while his mother is Plains Cree. He says he grew up listening to the series of Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy on the radio, while avidly reading western comic books – all of which would later influence his art.[1]
He says, "I've been an urban Indian since the age of nine. I've attended art school in the United States, trained in the Western tradition; yet I am referred to as an 'Indian' artist. I have danced and sung in the traditional powwow style of Northern Plains, yet my musical tastes are global..."[1]
McMaster studied art at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 1973 to 1975. He earned his BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He earned his Masters Degree in Anthropology and Sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario[3] and continued his studies at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.[4]
McMaster draws and paints with humor and an ironic juxtaposition of traditional and contemporary pop culture elements. Identities, fluid and multiple, are central to his art practice. In his piece Eclectic Baseball, "traditional Plains Indian symbols of warfare and sacred ceremony were freely mixed with symbols and actual equipment of contemporary baseball." One of his best known series is The cowboy/Indian Show.[1] Hide painting, pictographs, and petroglyphs inspire his methods of representation. He works in oil and acrylic.[4]
In 1995, he ceased being a full time artist in order to devote more time to curating, critical theory, and writing.
From 1977 to 1981, McMaster coordinated the Indian Art Program and was an instructor at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan. Beginning in 1981, he was curator of Contemporary Indian Art at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa.[3]
McMaster has curated a number of thought-provoking contemporary Native art shows, including INDIGENIA at the Canadian Museum of Civilization.[5] In 1995, McMaster curated Edward Poitras's exhibition at the Biennale di Venezia in 2005. Poitras, of Gordon First Nation, was the first aboriginal artist to represent Canada in the Biennale di Venezia.[6]
He served as the director's special assistant and deputy assistant director for cultural resources at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City from 2000 to 2004. He worked with the permanent collections there, as well as curating the shows, First American Art in 2004 and New Tribe/New York in 2005.[2]
In 2005, McMaster was awarded Canada's highest honor, the Order of Canada. That same year he also received the national Aboriginal Achievement Award.[2]