Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew walks to the legislative assembly at the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. The Manitoba government and a prominent art gallery are removing honours for Ferdinand Eckhardt over concerns he was a Nazi supporter in the 1930s.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Aaron Vincent Elkaim
WINNIPEG – The Manitoba government and a prominent art gallery are removing honours for Ferdinand Eckhardt over concerns he was a Nazi supporter in the 1930s.
The Winnipeg Art Gallery says it is removing Eckhardt’s name from its main entrance hall and all gallery materials.
Premier Wab Kinew has removed Eckhardt from the Order of the Buffalo Hunt, an award recognizing community leadership that Eckhardt received in 1982.
Kinew says someone who pledged an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler has no place being honoured in the public sphere.
Eckhardt died in 1995, and revelations about his past were reported last November by The Walrus magazine.
The Walrus reported that Eckhardt publicly endorsed Nazism and wrote several statements in far-right journals in the early 1930s, before moving to Canada and becoming a director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 10, 2024
