Honouring Norval Morrisseau (1932-2007)
15 FEBRUARY - 8 JUNE 2008
In recognition of Norval Morrisseau’s great contributions to art in Canada, a selection of works from the National Gallery of Canada’s collection recently returned from the tour of his solo exhibition will be installed alongside new acquisitions and an important loan from the Indian and Inuit Art Centre, Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada.

Morrisseau, founder of the “Woodland School” more recently known as the “Anishnaabe School” of painting, has received numerous awards in his Native Canada and abroad. He was appointed to the Royal Academy of Art in the 1973 and was also appointed Member of the Order of Canada in 1978. In 1980 he received an honorary doctrine from McMaster University. In 1989 Morrisseau was the only painter from Canada invited to participate in the exhibition titled Magiciens de la Terre / Magicians of the Earth at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Morrisseau has also been honored by the Native people when he was acknowledged as Grand Shaman of the Ojibwe and in 1995 the Assemble of First Nations gave him their highest award. His major retrospective organized by the National Gallery of Canada traveled to the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe, NM and to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, NYC.

Morrisseau had his first major American museum exposure in the 2000 exhibition Listening with the Heart: Frank Big Bear, George Morrison, Norval Morrisseau at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum Art, Minneapolis, MN curated by Todd Bockley.

Welcome to the Bockley Gallery blog. We will bring you information on gallery artists, interviews, as well as other ingredients in our cultural soup (events, friends doing interesting things, etc.).

Diane Wilson, whose husband Jim Denomie exhibited at the gallery last month, has published a beautiful memoir Spirit Car, Journey to a Dakota Past. She has graciously allowed us to reprint a riveting excerpt from the opening chapter.

Step Back in Time

November 6, 2002
Lower Sioux Reservation, Minnesota

“The motel clock on my bedside table read 4:10 AM, too early to get up and too late to hope for more sleep. I lay still with my eyes closed, trying to recall the dream that woke me and left a feeling of anxious violence lingering in its wake. I threw back the covers, then pushed open the drapes so that I could at least see the prairie night sky and a few stars beyond the casino’s bright lights.

My overnight bag sat on the luggage stand, neatly packed and ready for an early departure. I had left my notebooks on the table, along with a few reference books, to be packed quickly in the morning. My books detailed the history of the Lower Sioux reservation where I was staying at the Jackpot Junction Casino in Morton, Minnesota, about three hours southwest of Minneapolis. Before falling asleep I reread the chapter on the 1862 Dakota War, a bloody conflict between the Dakota and white settlers that had been fought in this area. Those were the images that haunted my dreams.

In the morning, just before sunrise, I would meet my younger brother Dave in the motel lobby. He told me later that he could not sleep, that he too woke just after 4:00 AM. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he spent the rest of the night quietly plucking his guitar.

I wondered how many other rooms were filled with people like us, who had come to be part of the first-ever Dakota Commemorative March. This event was planned to honor the Dakota who had been forced to walk 150 miles from the Lower Sioux reservation to a prison camp at Fort Snelling after the 1862 war. We were supposed to meet before daybreak at St. Cornelia’s Church, not far from the casino motel, beginning the walk shortly after dawn. The group planned to walk more than twenty miles each day, regardless of weather, arriving at Fort Snelling the following week. The March would follow roughly the same route as the original, commemorating the 140th anniversary of a painful history that had never before been publicly acknowledged.”
Used with permission of the author and Borealis Books.

The book is available from our neighbor Birchbark Books.

As well as being an author, Diane Wilson spends time working at another Minnesota art landmark, Franconia Sculpture Park.

Artist Jim Denomie and wife, author Diane Wilson, photograph by John Ratzloff.