KEEPING UP WITH THE KHAN: HOW THE AGA KHAN MUSEUM CATERS TO SUPPORTERS ALL AROUND THE GLOBE

(Fun)draising | Samantha Summers

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The Aga Khan Museum is extremely young. Founded in 2014, the museum is already globally renowned for its stellar programming, international reach, and incredible collection. I sat down with Tazim Hirji, Development Officer for the Aga Khan Museum’s Patrons’ Circle, to talk about how this truly global museum serves patrons around the world.

Exterior front of the Aga Khan Museum. Source.

What is the Aga Khan Museum’s mission?


It’s bringing cultures together to work together, share knowledge, and grow that knowledge. It’s not a matter of who you are, where you’re from. [Our] mission is to foster a sense of understanding and appreciation. [The museum is] a place where people can come and basically break their misconceptions and perceptions of who Muslims are. When you enter our permanent collection and you realize that no matter who you are, you have a connection to [Muslim culture]. We try to ensure that the focus of [the museum] is art from Muslim civilizations, but we look at contemporary artists, we look at exhibitions that complement what we’re here to do. We have a beautiful auditorium, and our programming is so vast, both our education and our performing arts programming, our exhibitions—we’re only four years old and I believe we’ve have 15-20 contemporary exhibitions that we’ve put up.


You’re busy here.


We’re very busy. We’re unique in the sense that our performing arts program is connected to our special exhibitions and our permanent collection. Our themes are very intertwined. Our lectures series, our workshops, all of that. We do programming out in the park. We try to bring communities together.

The reflecting pool in front of the Aga Khan Museum. Source.

Your work here is primarily with the Patrons’ Circle, which has seven levels. How are those levels decided upon? How did you make those distinctions?


When we first opened our team benchmarked against other museums locally as well as internationally. We looked at which levels of engagement we offered and what we could offer based on the programming we had here at the museum. When we opened we grew our membership, and over time we did a lot of informal questioning, getting feedback from our patrons. We are a global museum, we have programming we do outside of Toronto and supporters outside of Toronto. We have supporters across Canada, the US, Dubai, Pakistan, the UK, East Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, we have a Director’s Circle in South Africa. We’re truly a global museum. With supporters around the world we also put on programming in those cities. We’ve been talking to a lot of our supporters locally and globally, and getting a feel of, “Are there making use of our benefits here, someone living all the way in Dubai? If someone gets to an event once a year is that good enough, or if someone can’t come here can they make use of their admission passes?” So yes we looked at what other museums are doing, but we came to realize very quickly that we are truly a museum like no other. Our offerings have to be very unique. Our benefits have to be unique as well.

Part of the Aga Khan Museum's permanent collection, featuring a map depicting the spread of Islam across the world. Source.

That is a really interesting challenge. I cannot think of any other museum doing this. How does foreign patron membership grow?


Oftentimes it’s visitors that walk in the door. I try to make my way down from my office so that I’m connecting with people here. Quite often I get supporters just by meeting them. [I’m] always talking to people, always sharing what we offer, and encouraging them to join and support. Our patrons are our biggest advocates and ambassadors. They go out and they say, “Hey, you need to come and join me,” and I think a lot of that happens because of the close connection I have with our supporters. I make sure they know who I am, my team does the same, we try to build a rapport with our supporters so that they gain trust in us and they have a positive experience and so that they want others to enjoy that too.


So what kind of events do you have for international supporters? If someone in Dubai wants to stay in touch, but they don’t want to come to Toronto so you have an event there, what would that event look like?


In all of our cities we have volunteer convenors who support us. We have monthly meetings with our convenors over the phone, and every year they come to Toronto for a workshop where we train them, equip them, and talk about programming events in their own cities. In collaboration with our convenors we seek out opportunities where we can engage. There are times when we take programming to them, we’ll send artists to the different cities. We just had a performance in London, England, Misaq-e-Ishq [The Covenant of Love]. Ali Sethi, who is a Pakistani, Sufi singer, and Dr. Ali Asani, who is a Professor from Harvard, put together this show where Professor Ali Asani talks about Rumi poetry and Sufi poetry, and Ali Sethi will sing it. We try and seek out local opportunities as well as sending programming out. With [the exhibition] The World of the Fatimids, for example, we did a VR exhibition. Dr. Ulrike Al-Khamis, who is our Director of Programming and Collections, [went] on a tour to the west coast of Canada as well as through the US, and she did a presentation on The World of the Fatimids. We had the attendees experience the exhibition through VR.

A portion of the Aga Khan Museum's permanent collection. Source.

I’m always interested in how you go about targeting younger demographics. How do you communicate to young people that this is the Patrons’ Circle they should be investing in, rather than one at any other institution?


Globally we have a lot of young patrons. In Toronto itself we have a handful, and we’ve grown that quite considerably. I think the success of that has been first that we offer two levels for young patrons. We offer the single and the dual, [and] you can have anyone as your second card holder. That’s one aspect. The other thing is that our young patrons get the full benefits that our regular patrons get, which is not common in most institutions. Our young patrons get invitations to everything: our exhibition openings, our Patrons’ Lounge, Chai and Chats. They can be engaged along with everyone else. However, we do target the young patrons and provide programming that is more exciting for them. When we do our programming, our Programming Department makes sure we’re getting all the demographics in. For example, this season we have three comedians. In January we had Mo Amer, who has his own Netflix show. In April, we had Zahra Noorbakhsh, a female comedian. Then in June we had Azhar Usman, who we had last year and who had two-sold out shows. We’re trying to create more fun stuff. We try to ensure we connect with our young patrons on a personal level. It’s not just via emails, it’s picking up the phone and calling them and having a conversation.

Glass details inside the Aga Khan Museum. Source.

What is the most exciting thing for you that has been achieved through donor relations, fundraising, and of the broad financial-ness here at the Aga Khan Museum since you joined.


I think the most exciting part for me is that 2018 was a wildly successful year. We had a total of 54 Patrons’ Circle events that we did in the year, globally. I, personally, attended 48 of them.


You must be so tired!


I love what I do! It’s energizing, not tiring. I believe in this museum. I see the fruits of it and it’s just amazing. We have some incredible people supporting the museum and we are so grateful for that. That’s really exciting. They feel confident in us, they trust us, and they believe in us and want to continue supporting philanthropically to our mission.

Autumn at the Aga Khan Museum & Ismaili Centre. Source.

Check out these upcoming events and programs at the Aga Khan Museum: Moon Craters, Exoplanets, and Galactic Revolutions with Bettina Forget, Tabla Maestro Pandit Kumar Bose in Concert, Moon Mission with Bettina Forget. Check out their current exhibition, The Moon: A Voyage Through Time, here.

DIRTY MONEY: CANDICE HOPKINS ON THE ETHICS OF CASH IN CANADA

(Fun)draising | Samantha Summers

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In November I was able to catch world-renowned curator Candice Hopkins on a panel entitled Power and Possession: The Ethics of Collecting at the Gardiner Museum. She mentioned the ethics of donated and fundraised money, and I was intrigued. We sat down in January at the Toronto Biennial headquarters at the Museum of Contemporary Art, where Candice will be stationed for the next two years, to discuss fundraising ethics and more.

A sign that reads “We will protect our nation for future generations” at an Idle No More protest in Ottawa in 2013. As Canada becomes more invested in reconciliation measures questions of museum accountability to marginalized groups and nations within Canada are being raised more frequently. Source.

When I saw you speak you mentioned the ethics of using fundraised, donated money. What did you mean by that?

I think a big question is where that money comes from and who it impacts. Oftentimes funders - particularly in Canada - will fund or be aligned with exhibitions as a PR campaign. One of the best examples I know was an exhibition which took place in 1988 called The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada’s First Peoples which was sponsored by Shell Oil Canada, who were actively drilling on the lands of the Lubicon Lake Cree and many other Indigenous peoples. It was among the first exhibitions to be publicly protested in Canada. Protesters were taking issue with two main things. One, Shell Oil was actively drilling on Native land, Native land in northern Alberta that was left out of the treaty-signing process. Two, the exhibition itself had not involved any work or contribution by living Native people. The only Native people that they were collaborating with were in public programs, and this felt like it was after the fact. Out of this the Task Force on Museums and First Peoples was formed, which I really recommend people look at as an important resource.

And there was a counter-exhibit that was later developed.

It was called ReVisions, and it was at the Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff. One of the best things about ReVisions, which is documented in the catalogue, is an essay by Jean Fisher called “The Health of the People is the Highest Law.” Often people who live in very remote regions have fairly little voice, but the Lubicon [Lake Nation] used the language of existing media in protesting and starting that campaign against The Spirit Sings. They understood one of the ways of raising awareness was to contact all the formerly agreed-upon lenders to the exhibition, including the Smithsonian and the British Museum. They sent them letters asking them to withdraw their loans, and I believe the Smithsonian did, among others. That campaign was a very strategic way of understanding how exhibitions are put together and where the sources of influence are, which includes other museums.

A display of “Early Indigenous Tools” at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario. It is important to know not only where and who these tools came from, but also how they were sourced and purchased, and the political and social relationship between the purchaser and Indigenous peoples. Source.

From my perspective it doesn’t look like accountability for historic and present violence is happening as quickly in museums as it should. How have you observed accountability measures happening?

I think it happens in ways that aren’t as visible. One of the things that we did at the Biennial was to hire Ange Loft, a local Mohawk artist, musician and theatre director. We commissioned her to write the Indigenous Context Brief. One of the great things about the research that she’s been able to do is it gives people a different perspective of this place. When you’re asking artists to come in and work in a place in a way that’s site-responsive, you need to give them very specific kinds of tools. I think some of the biggest changes within institutions at the moment are structural. It’s important to consider questions such as, what is your board makeup? What voices are represented and not? What is your staff make up? How is this reflected in your programming? I think we’re in a position in Canada where we tend to think of society in a very binaristic way. We often think of society in terms of Indigenous people and settlers, and the voices that are left out are immigrant voices, also people who came here not by their own will - Canada also has a history of slavery. I feel like these kinds of histories and relations are important to talk about. [We need to be] thinking about how these conversations and collaborations have emerged, and also conflict, over the history of our country.

When working with the donors is there any push-back in trying to pitch this new way of looking at things?

What I find compelling is how quickly things have started to shift. Recently a potential funder [for the Toronto Biennial] wanted more information about how Indigenous artists will be represented, and also staff, advisors, board, and I thought, “Wow, we’ve come a long way if funders are actually asking for this.” When I first started working in this field, it almost felt like it was a checkbox, with regards to Indigenous participation. I think Canada is in the midst of a historical reckoning where the question of historical reconciliation is being taken seriously, and people are thinking about what their responsibility is in regards to that. On the other hand, I think that what happens when you’re working with funders is that they want to have an impact, so in the context of an exhibition they often want to associate their names with what they feel might be the biggest event. Oftentimes, when you’re working with or as a part of Indigenous projects there’s a real emphasis on process. So how do you create support for that process that might not be visible or it might take a very long time? To invest in people instead of the big, splashy thing at the end, can be a challenge for some funders and even arts organizations to consider.

Have you ever been in a position where you’ve had to compromise your artistic or curatorial vision in order to do what will most please donors, the public, or the media?

For an exhibition called Documenta 14 when it was opening in Kassel, Germany, we had commissioned a Sámi artist, Joar Nango, to produce a podium for us for the press conference. He really was insistent that this podium was made with materials that he had gathered enroute in his drive from Sápmi in northern Norway, all the way down to Athens, and all the way back to Kassel. He wanted to include a sealskin draped over the podium, and the concern from marketing was that there would be inordinate focus on this element of the podium that could potentially overshadow what we were trying to communicate because of the polarizing issue of seal hunting. Sustainable seal hunting is of course an Indigenous right, protected by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In the end he included a piece of clothing instead, but he wasn’t comfortable with the decision. I think it was a good example of the fact that there’s still a lot of bias and misunderstanding with regards to how many people live their lives. It’s a shame that in times like these there’s not sometimes an opportunity to slow down and ask, “Well, what’s really the important issue here?”

Is there a favourite thing that you’ve managed to achieve in your career?

One that I’m particularly proud of is this last SITE Santa Fe Biennial, which we called Casa tomada, which loosely translated from Spanish to English, is “house taken over” or “house under the influence.” The exhibition was concerned with the question of who belongs and who doesn’t and who decides who belongs and who doesn’t. Given all of the talk at the moment about borders, and this is happening in Ontario as well, a swing to extreme conservative values, the exhibition was a means to respond to this. We included a number of Indigenous artists, Black artists, and Chicano artists, as well as other artists from across the Americas. I think what was really valuable about this project is that it was the first time I think I’ve worked on an exhibition like this where the artworks weren’t seen first and foremost as representing the identity of where the artists were from. The weaving of someone like Melissa Cody, who is Diné/Navajo, was positioned as relating to migration, because the weaving she does emerges from Germantown weaving, which emerged out of the attempted cultural genocide of the Navajo Long Walk (Hwéeldi). The prints and drawings and textiles of Victoria Mamnguqsualuk were included because of her ongoing interest in the figure of Kiviuq, and Kiviuq is this eternal wanderer. I think it is opportunity for us to have this more expanded conversation, especially at a moment when people who consider themselves to be very liberal are having rather close-minded conversations regarding identity. This was an opportunity to open that up.

To learn more about Candice Hopkins’ current role with the Toronto Biennial, visit their website. To learn more about The Spirit Sings and ReVisions, check out these resources: Harrison (1988) "The Spirit Sings: The Last Song?", Wrightson (2017) "The Limits of Recognition: The Spirit Sings, Canadian Museums and the Colonial Politics of Recognition", Dibbelt (1988) "Nations gather to protest Glenbow's Spirit Sings display".

COMING INTO CONTACT WITH ROYALTY: TREASURES OF A DESERT KINGDOM AT THE ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM

Weekend Edition | Samantha Summers

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The exhibition entrance. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Lew.

Over a sumptuous breakfast at the media preview for the Royal Ontario Museum’s latest exhibition, Treasures of a Desert Kingdom: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India, I went looking for a chai masala. On my way back to my plate I bumped right into someone, nearly covering their suit in hot chai masala. I apologized, they accepted, and I sat back down, eager to hear remarks from today’s guest of honour: His Highness Maharaja Gaj Singh II of Marwar-Jodhpur.

After opening remarks from ROM Director and CEO Josh Basseches and a warm message of welcome and gratitude from Dinesh Bhatia, Consul General of India in Toronto, it was time for His Highness to speak. To the stage rose an older gentleman, poised and graceful, who moved with the gravitas of someone who has spent their life performing diplomacy. His suit was, thankfully, chai-free.

With mortification I realized that I had collided with His Highness.

His Highness Maharaja Gaj Singh II of Marwar-Jodhpur. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Lew.

His Highness and his daughter Princess Baijilal Shivranjani Rayje had travelled from India to attend this event. Many of the objects on display belonged to their family and have never before travelled outside of India. Together they form a dazzling collection that truly highlights the richness of the Kingdom of Marwal-Jodhpur.

This exhibition has now been shown at various institutions in the United States, and ROM curator Dr. Deepali Dewan set out to slightly modify it, adding transitional zones which encourage visitors to consider the collection from a broader perspective. Visitors are prompted to interpret jewelry through the lens of diplomatic relations, to see Indian art through a decolonial paradigm, and to interpret both art and games as complex networks of subtle cues charged with meaning. “I think people will come in because of the royal angle,” she tells me, “but I want them to leave with a more complicated understanding of India.”

A collection of beautiful jewelry, which Dr. Dewan wants to encourage visitors to interpret as tokens of diplomacy rather than as simply aesthetic objects. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Lew.

Dr. Dewan has carefully avoided cliches in this exhibition. She is purposefully not pandering to colonial notions of Indianness, which cast India’s cultural and artistic traditions as uniform, second to the diversity of European traditions. The stylized scalloped arches which Dr. Dewan identifies to me as being among the cliches of this projected idea of India are nowhere to be found. Although His Highness’ family can trace their roots back countless generations, and although much of the art I am viewing is at least a few centuries old, there is nothing to reinforce the colonial notion that this culture is a curiosity of the past. This exhibition is vibrant and bold. As I admire artwork from the seventeenth century, I am surrounded by the dynamic present of Marwal-Jodhpur.

One of the exhibition spaces after other guests have left. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Lew.

Before I leave, I take one last look through the gallery. The crowds have dissipated. Save security, I am alone in the exhibition. The quiet stands in sharp contrast to my morning: the bustle of the TTC, my run-in with His Highness. This feels like a different world. In just a few days this space will be bustling with visitors eager to see dazzling jewels and royal tents that are three times the size of my bedroom. Selfies will be taken, and voices will weave their way to the ceiling as people take in all the beauty that will lay before them. I soak in the quietness and reflect upon Dr. Dewan’s hope that this exhibition will complicate visitors’ understanding of India. In the stillness the message is reinforced that every jewel, every brush stroke, and every thread is infused with some kind of meaning. The objects communicate in a language I don’t speak, but I am acutely aware that I am surrounded by layers of meaning that run centuries deep.

This exhibition is beautiful. Beautifully complicated. Beautifully powerful. Beautifully nuanced.

I’ll be back to see it again.

The sun is a recurring theme throughout the exhibition. Photo courtesy of Kathleen Lew.

Treasures of a Desert Kingdom: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India is at the ROM (Garfield Weston Exhibition Hall) from March 9 to September 2, 2019.