Professor J. S. Émigré comes out of retirement to educate Marc Mayer

Professor J. S. Émigré is a rogue scholar who loves to vogue. He was born somewhere in the so-called Global South, but he has been so deeply and effectively acculturated, assimilated and adapted into Canadian culture, he can’t really remember exactly where he comes from. Colonized but not lobotomized, Émigré has devoted his illustrious career to combating the ethno-centrism that unfortunately plagues some of the nation’s most prominent cultural institutions.

“I believe it is essential to recognize the value of the knowledge of ALL the peoples who populate this land we now call Canada, the knowledge of the Nations that were here originally, and the knowledge of all the cultural groups that have arrived since contact with the Europeans,” said the Professor in an interview with McLean’s magazine in 1990.

Émigré, who now calls the Royal City of New Westminster his homeland, likes to ask the hard questions and have real conversations.

“Why should there be a hierarchy that makes Lacan’s musings on “the real” more or less worthy of consideration than Mary J. Blige’s? How can we bridge the space between Jennifer Lopez and Judith Butler? ” he has asked rooms full of attentive pupils.

Outraged by recent statements made by Marc Mayer, Director of the National Gallery of Canada, regarding the lack of cultural diversity in the nation’s most prominent institution, Professor Émigré has come out of retirement, embracing the new technologies of blogging and Facebook, to speak out.

“Marc Mayer says he only cares about “excellency,” that the National Gallery does not include more artists of non-European backgrounds because he “never sees” them. I am so sorry to hear Mr. Mayer is blind. I would like to open up his eyes, educate him.”

High culture, pop culture or urine culture, the professor believes it is the job of public cultural institutions to seek out and give visibility to the work of artists emerging out of the communities they are meant to be serving. This why the professor has set up a blog and a Facebook page where he will create an online archive of works by EXCELLENT Canadian and Canadian-based artists of non-European descent.