Officer of the Order of Canada

• Awarded on: October 5, 2006
• Invested on: February 22, 2008

Thought-provoking and influential, Gerald McMaster is a major figure in contemporary Aboriginal art. As a curator, artist and scholar, he has brought Indigenous art to the forefront of our cultural landscape. At the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and later, at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, he created insightful, provocative and sometimes unconventional exhibitions of First Nations art, history and culture. He is also highly regarded as an artist, renowned for a body of work that uses satire and humour to challenge the stereotypes of Aboriginal peoples found in history and pop culture. He now champions historic and modern First Nations art as curator of Canadian art at the Art Gallery of Ontario.