Exhibition: Death of Adonis by Kent Monkman

In this intimate installation, visitors are invited to slow down and spend time with a single monumental work by Cree artist Kent Monkman. Death of Adonis reimagines and challenges Albert Bierstadt’s 1888 painting The Last of the Buffalo, exposing the colonial narratives woven into nineteenth-century representations of the North American landscape.
Bierstadt’s original painting, often read as a lament for a “vanishing” wilderness and its Indigenous inhabitants, conceals the true causes of the buffalo’s near-extinction and the displacement of Indigenous nations settler expansion and resource exploitation. By linking the
dying buffalo to the supposed fate of Indigenous peoples, Bierstadt reinforced the myth of a “vanishing race.”
Designed as a space for contemplation and further exploration, this one-work gallery invites visitors to take a seat and spend time with a work that turns the tables on the settler gaze, reclaiming the visual language and viewpoint of centuries of colonial representation.
“Death of Adonis offers an entry point into the work of one of Canada’s most renowned artists, inviting visitors to look closely and consider how art history has been written and who has been left out. By drawing on European painting styles, Monkman reclaims and re-writes these visual traditions to tell Indigenous stories, creating a powerful and accessible work that sparks conversation about the past while imagining new possibilities for the future.” Senior Curator, Lisa Ranallo