The National Gallery of Canada announced on June 7 Jean-François Bélisle as its next director and CEO. Bélisle, who since 2016 has been director general and chief curator of the Musée d’art de Joliette (MAJ), Quebec, will take office on July 17 for a five-year term. In addition, he is the newly elected president of the Canadian Art Museum Directors’ Organization. News of his leadership comes less than a week after the Ottawa gallery revealed that Interim Director and CEO Angela Cassie was stepping down to take on a new leadership role in Manitoba. Cassie had run the gallery since June 2022, after Sasha Suda deceased to run the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
“We are delighted to welcome Jean-François to the Gallery. He is a recognized leader with the ability to advance the National Gallery of Canada’s five-year roadmap, transform together“said Françoise Lyon, president of the board of directors of the gallery, in a press release. “Jean-François’ mandate, focused on art, will continue the transformation of the Museum into a national museum open to all Canadians, regardless of their political, religious or cultural identity.
At MAJ, Bélisle, who holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in art history from Concordia University in Montreal, focused on exhibiting Indigenous art. In 2020, he staged an exhibition examining, through contemporary interventions, how a historic collection of bronze sculptures represented Indigenous peoples; that year he mounted another exhibition of the work of contemporary artist Joseph Tisiga (Kaska Dena First Nation), who was investigating cultural appropriation in Western Canada. Founding director of the Arsenal art foundation in Montreal and Toronto, Bélisle previously worked for the global auction house Sotheby’s in Geneva and for a private art foundation in Spain.
THE Globe and Mail noted that Bélisle comes to the National Gallery of Canada at a time of turmoil, as the gallery has faced high turnover during Suda’s three-year tenure and four controversial high-profile layoffs under Cassie that have sowed unease among the staff. “I really need to meet . . . everyone around the gallery to listen to them, to hear their stories and to hear their frustrations, or their pride and their joys, to understand the situation a little better,” he said. he told the publication “In my experience, having open, honest and transparent exchanges solves 60% of the problems. So, I think that’s the direction I want to take at least for the first two months. And then chart a better future with everyone.
