Author Description

"Hiding the Audience examines how the development of Canadian prairie arts institutions in the context of an implicitly Euro- or Anglo-Canadian audience clashed with the creation of regional arts that needed to acknowledge a Native Canadian presence to flourish. It looks in detail at the regional versus international strains in the history of the Banff Centre, at the development of the Glenbow Museum and the controversy over The Spirit Sings exhibition, at the two decades of contention regarding statues of Louis Riel in Regina and Winnipeg, and at the contrasts in audience participation in the 25th Street Theatre's productions of Prairie Wheat and Jessica." "Primarily a work of cultural history, this study uses archival sources, post-colonial theory, and the theories implied in the fiction of Cherokee author Thomas King to probe the ways in which the whitestream assumptions of the individuals who institutionalized the arts on the Prairies hid both a Native audience and the kinds of issues and presentations such an audience might reasonably expect to see - and that might help make the settler audience understand the responsibilities of becoming native to this place."--Jacket.