The Ottawa-Charlottetown visual artist who was asked to remove a politically charged painting from the walls of the Atlantic Veterinary College has won an apology from University of Prince Edward Island officials.
“It’s great that we can move on and put this behind us,” Christopher Griffin said in an interview from Charlottetown. “It takes courage for them to apologize, and I think it’s good for the university and the student body, and everyone really.”
In a
statement from the vet college at UPEI
, officials acknowledged the blunder, saying it had been a mistake to ask Griffin to “choose between taking down his painting or leaving his residency.”
They issued a direct apology to Griffin and invited him to discuss and show his work in a yet-to-be-scheduled public forum.
“The decision did not reflect our institutional values, and we regret the hurt and frustration it caused,” they wrote. “Art plays an essential role in education and public life — it challenges us, encourages dialogue, and fosters understanding. We fell short of our responsibility to protect that role.”
Griffin, who has already removed his work from the college, said he would be pleased to participate in a forum.
The controversy erupted when the school’s administration received complaints from two American faculty members and one student about Griffin’s recently installed oil painting, entitled The Crossing. The large-scale piece depicts a group of lemmings in a boat adorned with a crumpled American flag.
It’s clearly inspired by the famous 1851 painting by Emanuel Leutze of Washington crossing the Delaware, but set in a cold northern river dotted with ice chunks.
“On the face of it, it can be seen as very critical, but the lemmings are painted (to look) dignified and solemn. I definitely didn’t want to be snarky and I didn’t want to be cartoonish,” Griffin explained, adding that lemmings seemed an appropriate animal to represent the “self-inflicted wounds” from the U.S. administration.
He said the painting was also a lament for the freedom-loving United States he knew from watching Hollywood movies and TV shows like Happy Days as a child.
“I’ve been inundated with American culture my whole life, so this image of Washington crossing the Delaware is as familiar to me as it would be to many Americans,” said Griffin, who intentionally placed his boatload of lemmings in the middle of the river.
“They can cross safely to the other side or they can turn around and they can go back. Things don’t have to be the way they are,” he said. “That’s part of the message, too.”
Griffin was the college’s first artist-in-residence, invited to participate in the unpaid program after school officials saw his animal-themed work at an exhibition in 2024. He was provided with studio space in the foyer and a sunlit area in the university commons to display his paintings.
Following the Jan. 20 inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, Griffin said his paintings started to become more political.
“When the new administration down south was insulting and threatening rhetoric to my country, my way of responding was to communicate through my work,” he said. “So I decided to do a series called O Canada.”
Paintings in the series show “quintessential Canadian themes,” including icebergs, polar bears, musk oxen and walruses, as well as an elephant and the lemmings. There were no complaints until The Crossing went up.
The 58-year-old artist, who maintains studios in Charlottetown and Ottawa, where he lived for 24 years, began the residency last November. It was due to finish at the end of April.
Our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark our homepage and sign up for our newsletters so we can keep you informed.
