Inclusion and Exclusion: A Critical Analysis of Public Monuments at Canada’s Pier 21

Philosopher Mark Kingwell has argued that to be a public good, something must be both “non-excludable” and “non-rivalrous.” If people can be excluded from a space, then it is not public. Much of the literature on public space focuses on physical rather than social inclusion or exclusion. In this presentation we draw upon Kingwell’s notion of inclusion as “an individual’s sense of belonging combined with a sense of uniqueness,” and the implications of this definition for public art. Here we use a particular case study, which applies this critical analysis to the monuments outside of the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Volunteers (Les Benevoles) and The Emigrant, while perhaps designed to celebrate Canada’s multiculturalism, can be interpreted instead as signaling Canada’s enduring commitment to white supremacy, Eurocentricity and colonization, especially when reading such through the eyes of immigrants who have been racialized. Thus the “public space” becomes exclusionary. We consider the implications for policy and practice and ways in which a diversity and inclusion lens can be applied to the development of public art.