Understanding My Grandmother’s Legacy in a Changed World

“Niizhwaaso Collaborative Learning Centre.” These were the words etched into the glass doors of what was once The Clara Lander Library, which greeted my daughter and me at the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq (WAG-Qaumajuq) one February day in 2025. Qaumajuq [pronounced HOW-ma-yourq or sometimes KOW-ma-yourk] means “it is bright,” or “it is lit,”  in Inuktituk, the Inuit language. Nizhwaaso means “seven” in Ojibwe, an acknowledgement of the seven indigenous languages spoken in what is now the Canadian province of Manitoba. The WAG is the first major art institution in Canada to indigenize its name, according to its website.

I hadn’t been to the WAG in years. But my daughter and I came on a late February day in 2025 in search of a kind of balm. My mother had just passed away (hence the reason we were in Winnipeg in the middle of winter), and this was another way to connect with family roots and specifically, to my Baba, Clara Lander. My daughter knew WAG was a big part of my grandmother’s life, and I was excited to show her the research library that was named for her.

The WAG holds a special place in my heart. Clara was one of its early volunteers and was appointed its first woman president shortly before she died unexpectedly in September 1978 at the age of 62. I have fond memories of visiting the Gallery with her, of her proudly shepherding my sister and me through the permanent collections and special exhibits with infectious enthusiasm and breathtaking knowledge. She walked through the galleries as if she owned the place. It was, in many ways, a second home for her.

Clara’s sudden death left the Gallery stunned and bereft. As a tribute to her legacy, the Clara Lander Library was established as a resource for research on Canadian and Indigenous art and culture. Its presence was a reminder of the critical role she played in the WAG’s transformation from a sleepy provincial art gallery into a nationally respected art museum. So I admit to being taken aback at seeing her name and photo removed from what had been created as a testament to her contributions. The Library’s holdings are currently accessible by appointment only.  

Clara was a trailblazer, born to Jewish immigrant parents in small-town Saskatchewan in 1916. She left home at 17 to earn her B.A. at the University of Saskatchewan and then moved to the “metropolis” of Winnipeg to marry a young doctor, my grandfather. As my own mother once wrote about her, “Mom was something of a rarity in the Winnipeg of the 40s and 50s—a woman with a trained intellect, ambitious and fiercely active. Illness and her husband’s desire that she not work had turned her formidable abilities to the service of the arts.”  

Yet despite the opprobrium of her cloistered community and the pervasive antisemitism and sexism of the times, Clara, then a mother of three young daughters, went back to university and earned her master’s in English and ancient Greek in 1956 (a Ph.D followed in 1968). A scholar to her core, Clara lived to learn and inspire others to always be curious. Art and culture were her passions and her outlets. Her lifelong journey was to expand her own understanding and appreciation of art, and she was determined to educate the public about this ever-evolving world.

One of the most impactful roles my grandmother played on the Canadian art scene was her involvement in the movement to serialize and catalog Inuit art, advocating for its recognition as “fine art” and not dismissed as “handicrafts” by the White art world. Through this system, artists were recognized and fairly compensated for their work. Indeed, Clara was a driving force behind the Gallery’s acquisition and showcasing of “Eskimo Art, ”as it was known then. Today, the WAG houses the largest public collection of Inuit art in the world, according to its website. 

As my daughter and I walked through the newly expanded 40,000 square foot museum that February day, with its Visible Vault designed to showcase the thousands of Indigenous carvings in their collection that Clara helped grow, I grappled with the meaning of her absence from the walls of this place she loved. I wanted to think of it not so much as the removal of my grandmother, but as the rightful inclusion of disenfranchised artists, communities, and cultures. After all, isn’t the evolution of the Winnipeg Art Gallery into “a home where Indigenous communities feel welcome—where everyone feels welcome,” as the organization’s website states, what she had been working towards? 

Yet as a Jewish woman in mid-twentieth century Canada, she too fought to be included, to have her talents and intelligence recognized and respected. As I walked through the gallery, I wondered if her own struggles to feel at home in the cultural world of her time would still have a place in our current conversations about belonging.  

I’ve come to realize that my unease with this name change was not only about my grandmother, whom I adored and admired, but it was also about me. It was about my daughter, her namesake; it was about how remembering and honoring the women we love is an extension of our own identity. If they are forgotten, what does that mean for us? Then again, perhaps the responsibility for remembering should rest on her family’s shoulders and not on an institution. 

I try to imagine how Clara would respond to a vastly changed Winnipeg Art Gallery, absorbing the culture shift of renaming a major art institution in the Inuit language (inconceivable in her own lifetime), and ultimately reveling in the groundbreaking nature of that move. She would feel immense satisfaction about how the doors she had to push open for herself and for the artists she championed created an opening for others to walk into this newly designed, intentional space filled with light and affirmation.  

Finally, Clara would beam to see her granddaughter leading her great-granddaughter through the permanent collections and special exhibits of this place that she nurtured and cherished. That is a legacy to be proud of. Baba would be kvelling.