The Logic of Empire

When the Canadian Museum for Human Rights opened in Winnipeg, in 2014, the controversies didn’t so much greet it as precede it on a red carpet of anger. That is to say, before the building by the distinguished American architect Antoine Predock even saw completion, the logic of the space had been comprehensively interrogated.

Sponsored by the much-reviled media magnate Izzy Asper and owned by what is still technically known as the Crown in Canada, the museum invited objection from the word go. There were questions about its failure to acknowledge Indigenous land claims at the Forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, its strange stance on Ukrainian Canadians who helped shape modern Manitoba, and, indeed, its design by a foreign architect. The standard, almost pro forma objections that it was over schedule and over budget — $350 million, rather than the planned $200 million — seemed fairly pale in comparison.

And yes, since it came up, why was there...