Monkman’s two large paintings, the first in a series of commissions for the Met’s Great Hall, “highlight the Museum as both a byproduct and beneficiary of colonizing forces, and illuminate how encyclopedic art museums perpetuate settler perspectives of history,” writes curator Randall Griffey. “In this regard, his commission is part of a larger institutional reconsideration of the Museum’s responsibility to attend more vigorously to new and broader perspectives on history and culture, as they relate to our wide-ranging collection.” – The Metropolitan Museum of Art