The Case of the Hidden Buffalo

Throughout history public art has been controversial, and no form of art is more public than sculpture.

Naturally, publicly displayed sculpture in Alberta was bound to get caught up in the ideological culture wars of the early 21st century.

So it was an interesting coincidence that last week, just after lame-duck Premier Jason Kenney announced he would soon have a sculpture of Winston Churchill to shove up Calgary’s nose, the City of Edmonton decided to leave another in storage out of concern it could be interpreted “as a celebration of colonization.”

The Buffalo and the Buffalo Fur Trader — actually two bronze sculptures that were commissioned in 2012 by the city and the Edmonton Arts Council to be installed at the south end of the iconic Walterdale Bridge — has now been transformed into another set of creatures entirely.

That is to say, two large and heavy white elephants on which the city had spent $375,000 by the time they were completed.

“While some audiences may find the artwork thought provoking, for others it may cause harm and induce painful memories,” the city said in a news release. “For this reason, it is not considered inclusive to all Edmontonians.”

The artist, Vancouver-born Ken Lum, now a professor in the University of Pennsylvania’s school of design, was not happy. He disputed the city officials’ concern, saying in an email to media that “perhaps the city is not ready for a real dialogue about its colonial past and the condition of coloniality that continues to mark the present. That was my intention with the work, not to celebrate colonialism as the city suggests.”

Earlier this month, Lum told APTN that his goal was to depict the troubled relationship between the settler state and Indigenous peoples.

He told APTN he believes a non-Indigenous artist was chosen for the project because “the city was wanting an artist with engineering and infrastructure experience to be a part of the bridge design as well as the public art.”

The sculptures — one over three metres tall — have been in storage since 2016, when they were completed by Lum. They will remain there until someone can figure out what to do with them.

It is tempting to portray this as a tale of two cities, but it’s really about two levels of government: a city council that leans progressive, and which is bound to be accused of suffering from a surfeit of sensitivity, and a province that unquestionably brings an excess of insensitivity to every issue.

Given its inherently political nature, a surprising amount of public sculpture ends up in storage, outright exile, or subject to modifications to hide very public private parts, all of which happened to Regina’s statue of Louis Riel, which disappeared from public view the same year Lum completed his work on The Buffalo and the Buffalo Fur Trader.