Days after Sasha Suda abruptly resigned as director of the National Gallery of Canada last July, 16 prominent Canadians wrote Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez detailing the qualifications they felt were required of the next director. The implication was that Suda had few of them.

Astonishingly, Cassie is acting as if her position were permanent. She fired four senior managers, including the long-serving senior curator of Indigenous art and the deputy director hired by Suda. Cassie won’t discuss those dismissals, calling the details “private.” She insists she is implementing the strategic plan, supported by the gallery’s board of trustees.

Cassie is artlessly confident, “a proven leader, motivator and mentor … effective in leading people through change,” as her LinkedIn profile states. To her, the strategic plan is the holy grail. To the outsider, it’s a tableau of platitude and confection shaped in seminars and seances. Its theme is advancing justice, equity, diversity and accessibility, all essential goals in a changing society. Now everything — people, programs, art — must be seen through an “anti-racist” and “anti-oppression” lens. ... 

For Cassie, the strategic plan is rationale for cleaning house, which explains so many vacancies. Defending her approach, she reliably mentions the endorsement of the board and its chair, Françoise Lyon, who is the other problem.

Unlike her immediate three predecessors, Lyon has no background in art. She was invited to apply to join the board in 2017 and soon she was leading it. Lyon runs a private-equity firm, her biography says, “with extensive experience working with ultra-high net worth and high net worth individuals.” Her world is business and finance, not arts and culture.

So, here we are. A thinly qualified former director issues a manifesto called a strategic plan and decamps. An interim director, with fewer credentials, implements radical changes that will bind her successor. A board chair, with no qualifications, insists the trustees cannot interfere.

Canada’s National Gallery has fallen into the hands of amateurs in thrall to dogma and in love with mantra, with more confidence than credibility. Feckless and reckless, they march us to cultural mediocrity — or worse.

The professor alerted her students beforehand, careful to ensure that observant Muslims who object to the depiction of their prophet would not have to see him on screen.

It seems that the professor had done everything right: providing images of famous paintings for her students’ edification but allowing students to opt out of viewing them if doing so ran contrary to their religious beliefs.

But who are we kidding? This is a liberal arts college in the twenty-first century. Of course the incident was branded “Islamophobic” by students and faculty. And of course the professor was fired.