Architecture and Ideology: The National Gallery of
Canada
(A Reading of the Architecture Using Feminist and Postmodernist Theory)
Joan Acland
1989
The National Gallery of Canada, designed by Moshe Safdie,
officially opened in May, 1988. Simultaneously, discourses rooted largely in feminist
and postmodernist theory questioned the enterprise of the museum in a post-industrial
society. These writings demythologized the concept of the museum as a universally
representative institution and placed its authority in doubt. Since its inception some two
hundred years ago, the museum as a political vehicle vesting the interests of culture in
the hands of the 'public' has been surrounded by contesting discourses of politics and
power. The identity and 'meaning' of the National Gallery of Canada, both as a popular
national symbol and as a signification of culture, is also based on a complex network of
representational practices. The intention of this thesis is to make 'more visible' the
'dynamics of ideology' which affected the form the architecture would take, and which in
turn 'naturalizes' a particular view of history; one which constructs 'meaning' in art and
architecture, and inevitably constructs the public as well. This study is a particular
'reading' of the architecture of the National Gallery of Canada, feminist and
postmodernist, taken at a specific point in time, the opening of the Gallery's first
permanent structure.
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