Kenneth Montague’s collection is featured in a new book, As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic.
Ebti Nabag
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While building his successful dental practice in Toronto, Kenneth Montague also immersed himself in art and photography.
Over three decades of voracious collecting, Montague has built one of the world’s largest private collections of work by black artists. From 1997 until it outgrew his living room, his gallery The Wedge Collection was open to the public; It has since spawned Wedge Curatorial Projects, a nonprofit organization that supports emerging black artists.
This month, art book publishers will showcase Aperture Montague’s amazing collection in a new book. As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic “represents who I am and the Commonwealth history of Britain and the Caribbean, even going back to the history of slavery,” says Montague penta from his country home north of Toronto. Best-selling artist Teju Cole wrote the foreword, and noted British cultural historian Mark Sealy wrote an introduction.
“Photography was my entry point into collecting, but I’ve branched out into painting, video and sculpture,” says Montague, 58. “The work I’m buying now would fit into what the book calls ‘power’—political work where the subject has more impact on how they appear, like self-portraits. You have ultimate control over the image and project yourself the way you want to be seen.”
A childhood visit to the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum — across the Detroit River from his birthplace of Windsor, Ontario — sparked Montague’s love of photography.
“I saw James Van Der Zee’s iconic photo of a black couple in fur coats with a Cadillac,” he says. “It was very ambitious for a black kid from Windsor. I wanted more connection with this photo, even though I didn’t know what a collector was.”
Fifteen years later, he purchased the photograph—“the first significant photograph I bought,” says Montague, who now owns more than 400 works of art.
The Wedge Collection’s name comes from its intention to “squeeze” black artists into contemporary art history, he says. Montague has no intention of selling his works, even if they increase in value. “I am not a trained curator. I have a collector’s mindset and want to have longer relationships with the works. I’m not a shopper or a pinball player.”
An exhibition based on As we ascend will debut at the University of Toronto Museum of Art this fall before touring Canada and the United States
Montague shared some of his favorite things penta.
The art on the walls of my office includes… in the waiting room are 1980s photos by Jamel Shabazz of children on the subway in New York City. Until last year, it was a Kehinde Wiley, but when it was chosen for President Obama’s official portrait, it became too valuable to just have around. I replaced it with a photo by Tyler Mitchell, an aspiring fashion photographer.
If I only had to save one piece of art from my collection from a fire, it would be… Oh boy. They are all my babies. Of all the images, probably “Boy With Flag”, a work by Vanley Burke, which is on the cover of As we ascend. It’s a kid with a Union Jack flag on his bike. A very personal image for me. I was this 10-year-old kid riding my bike with a Canadian flag. But for the kid in the photo, it was a much more political statement for Britain in the 1970s, with the likes of the National Front close by. It was a very daring gesture in a place where people were trying to say he didn’t belong.
The most inspiring place to look at art is… I love the Studio Museum in Harlem. I always leave enriched with the discovery of a new artist. It has been an inspiration for my own collection for years. There I met artists like Kehinde Wiley and Mickalene Thomas.
Among the five artists, living or dead, I would invite to dinner are…
Jean Michel Basquiat.
[Pioneering American painter]
Barkley Hendricks, a recently deceased friend whose work is in the Wedge Collection. Author and editor Toni Morrison, an artist in her own right. Stuart Hall, the [late British] cultural theorist. [American painter and multimedia artist]
Faith Ringgold, who is currently having an exhibition at the New Museum in New York. I met her at MoMA’s reopening, just before Covid. She is an amazing African American artist.
I would take a first time visitor to Toronto to see… The Art Gallery of Ontario. I finish the [Africa Acquisitions Committee at London’s] Tate to become a trustee there. I have a seven year old and a five year old and we go there all the time. It is a public institution that truly responds to needed changes, expanding their collections to represent the audiences they serve. I borrowed some works for an incredible contemporary Caribbean art exhibition, Fragments of Epic Memory, which they just finished.
I’m reading now… a great book on the caribbean and jamaican experience in toronto, Fry plantains by Zalika Reid Benta. It was a bestseller in Canada. It’s based on her own experiences growing up in Scarborough and moving up [upscale] Forest Hill and her cross-cultural experiences that mirror mine. It’s also very funny.
On the playlist in my office you can hear… When I was growing up I played in a reggae/pop band. We were two parts The Clash and Ramones, one part first wave Jamaican reggae and dancehall. i love it all My playlist would include something by Lee “Scratch” Perry. The Weeknd, a great artist from Toronto. And I love The Clash and Massive Attack.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.