Kenneth Montague's vast art collection explores Black identity
September 30, 2022
For the past 25 years, Dr. Kenneth Montague has been collecting art from emerging and established Black artists.
He created Wedge Collection, considered Canada’s largest privately owned assemblage of Black art, in 1997 to acquire and exhibit art that explores Black identity.
“When I started, there were very few Black artists in the public sphere,” Montague recalled. “Back then, there was Jean-Michel Basquiat and maybe older artists like Gordon Parks for some people. Now, not only do people know of Parks and other established artists, but also they know new art stars like Kehinde Wiley who is represented in my collection. I could never afford him now, but because I visited the artist in his studio when he started almost 20 years ago, I was able to establish a relationship with him and acquire the work on a dentist salary when it was affordable.”
The works of Wiley, Parks and 72 others artists –past and present -- are featured in an exhibit, ‘As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic’, at the University of Toronto Art Centre until November 19.
Organized by Aperture, it is curated by Elliott Ramsay of the Polygon Gallery.
“What you can expect is a show that is a balance of both new and emerging artists that you never have heard of and quite established artists who you may be surprised are in a collection that is based in Toronto,” said Montague who is also a dentist. “Viewers can also expect a large amount of Black Canadian artists because that has been really my focus from the start.”
Familiarity, he pointed out, resides not just in the exhibition collectively, but in the photographs ‘unto themselves’.
“Black subjects are depicted by Black photographers presented as they wish to be seen,” Montague, an Art Gallery of Ontario Trustee, said. “Largely, these subjects are aware of the camera and yet they never seem rigid or unnatural. The gaze is mutual and consensual. But the imagery produced is far from uniform. It is as varied, surprising and heterogeneous as the Black Atlantic itself. Like a family album, it is idiosyncratic.”
The exhibit comes on the heels of his book bearing the same name as the exhibit title.
Filled with miscellanies from the Wedge Collection, it was launched last year.
“I have really enjoyed putting together a large library of art books with a focus on Black artists,” said the married father of two children who was the lead vocalist in a band while at the University of Windsor and still enjoys playing the guitar. “The name that kept coming up when I looked at who was the publisher was the Aperture Foundation that has had a long history of supporting and promoting artists of colour and are a very established and respected photography institution based in New York.
“I was thrilled when they reached out to me in 2019 to think about doing a book. I think the thing that appealed to them was that it was a Black collector of Black artists. I thought that was important because we have to keep a little something for ourselves in our community. I think they understood that philosophy. Because I have this unique collection of Black Canadian artists, it was also an opportunity to showcase some work many people globally had not seen and put it in the context of some work that is familiar.”
The title, ‘As We Rise, is borrowed from a phrase that his late father often invoked.
Spurgeon Montague, who migrated from Jamaica in the 1950s and was Windsor’s first Black male high school teacher, died in March 2018 at age 88.
“He and my mother, who was a dietitian, had interesting lives as pioneers in their community and my father always repeated this phrase, ‘As we do well, we should pull up others’,” said Montague who, in 2016, was conferred with an honourary doctorate by the Ontario College of Art & Design. “When I mentioned that was my father’s motto, the folks at Aperture recognized that is a metaphor for what I have been doing with my art collection which is pulling these artists together and lifting them up. It also reflects my philosophy which is we need to see more positive images of the Black community.
“There are so many celebrated images of Black people that are about suffering and oppression. I want to make sure that the works that I acquire and display are about Black joy and community which is one of the tropes of my book along with identity and power so that we have some agency here. While there is an important political theme in a lot of the work I have, it is not about oppression. It is about having power.”
Dr. Kenneth Montague at home in front of works by ‘As We Rise’ artist Ruddy Roye (Photo by Aaron Clarke)
As a 10-year-old, Montague attended his first art exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) that is across the river from Windsor where he was born and raised.
While dad was studying on Saturdays for his Master’s degree at Wayne State University, Ellen Montague took her three children to the DIA or the Detroit Historical Society.
One of the early images still etched in his memory is the 1932 James Van Der Zee portrait of the couple in the raccoon coats in front of a shiny Cadillac taken on West 127th St. in Harlem.
“That was on the wall at the DIA and it’s burned in my brain,” said Montague who made the iconic image his first art purchase. “I had never seen Black folks depicted like this. At the time, I didn’t know about the Harlem Renaissance. The only thing I associated Harlem with was crack cocaine. I had no idea that these communities had such a richness and sophistication. For me, that became an important window into my own identity. It was not on a platter as it was for my Jamaican cousins that grew up in exclusively Black communities. We were the only Black family on our block.”
Has technology changed the world of art collecting?
“I am old school,” said Montague who is 58. “I was attracted to photography because it was the art of my era in much the same way that someone might have been attracted to painting 200 years ago or someone born now who is attracted to social media or filmmaking. Technology keeps changing. Good art is always good art and bad art is bad art. I don’t get too fazed by the waves of new platforms that artists use to get their message across. As something like non-refundable tokens become a more popular platform for artists, you will see an increasing quality of artwork. I think that is when I might dip my toe into that. But at this moment, I steer clear of things where there is not that pool of quality yet. I am not against these changes. It takes a little while for a platform to start being utilized by thoughtful practitioners and you start moving towards it becoming more mainstream. I think that will happen over time.”
He was turned on to dentistry by a cousin nearly 20 years younger who is winding down his career in May Pen, Jamaica.
Between the ages of five and 15, Montague spent summer breaks with relatives in St. Elizabeth and Clarendon.
Whenever he visited Howard University graduate Dr. Maxwell Timoll practice, the septuagenarian allowed his younger cousin to put his hand on his when he was extracting a tooth.
“I remember a farmer coming in to have his child’s tooth taken out and leaving a bushel of mangoes,” said Montague who has established a scholarship at the University of Windsor. “It was like my family was doing this community work and that was very aspirational for me. When I said to my parents I liked that and might want to be a dentist, I got a lot of support from them.”
Dr. Kenneth Montague at home (Photo by Ebti Nabag)
Starting his dental career in 1987, he opened Word of Mouth Dentistry five years later. His patients include local and international entertainers and visiting celebrities.
Montague, who in 2007 and 2009 visited an orphanage in Mali and provided dental care, supplies and oral hygiene instruction to needy children, said there is a connection between dentistry and fine art.
“There are some things that are very connected and there are some that are completely disparate,” the University of Toronto Faculty of Dentistry graduate pointed out. “The connected things are the craftsmanship, the appreciation of quality and the ability to be creative. I enjoy cosmetic dentistry. I really like to beautify someone else’s smile. I make drawings of them right beside the dental chair. I use art on display in my office as therapy. There is music playing that I love and there is art on the wall that I have curated. That keeps me happy in a setting that is a happy place for my patients.”
