Career retrospective shows why Kent Monkman will always matter – CBC

Oct 09, 2025

History is Painted by the Victors looks back at celebrated Cree artist’s career

It’s 10 a.m. at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Press and curators fill the room as Kent Monkman prepares to discuss his first major Canadian retrospective. The land acknowledgment — delivered in French, recognizing the territories of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, Wendat and Abenaki peoples — sets the tone. Then Monkman and co-curator Léuli Eshrāghi begin unpacking History is Painted by the Victors, an exhibition co-curated with John Lukavic of Denver Art Museum, where the show premiered earlier this year.

The retrospective features 42 works centred on Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, Monkman’s two-spirit drag persona. In meticulously painted recreations of 19th-century Western and European masterpieces, Miss Chief appears in stilettos and flowing fabrics, transforming from the marginalized background figures of colonial art into commanding protagonists.