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Cree playwright Tomson Highway has expressed frustration with the political correctness in Canada that hinders him from selecting the best actors possible, regardless of race, to star in his plays about aboriginal communities.

Actors of European origin simply aren't supposed to be playing the roles of Natives, according to the predominating view within the theatre community. Highway thinks that is silly. He believes good actors can assume any identity and the best actor available should get a role, regardless of race.

Highway makes sense. Now, turn the argument around. How do you feel about a Native playing the role of a very iconic white woman? For example, Marilyn Monroe?

Mohawk artist Shelley Niro asks that question in her art. An example is the life-sized photograph Niro took of herself dressed as Marilyn Monroe

in that famous scene in The Seven-Year Itch when the actress walks over a subway grate and a rush of air lifts her skirt.

Niro's cheeky The 500-Year Itch is one of the stars of the new exhibition, Persona: From the Collection, at the National Gallery of Canada. Actually, the show is one from the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography but the museum has temporarily moved into the National Gallery awaiting the completion of some renovations.

All the images in Persona are of photo-artists playing roles and borrowing identities. There are huge dollops of humour in most of these works, yet they deal with serious issues. In Niro's case, she seems to be saying that aboriginal women are not allowed to be iconic sex symbols in our society. But why not? Think about it.

In Persona, Rosalie Favell, a Metis artist living in Ottawa, explores society's tolerance, or lack thereof, of lesbians in three photo-based works culled from a series called Plains Artist Warrior.

Toronto artist Rafael Goldchain assumes the identity of various relatives and ancestors, both male and female, in a series of six classic-looking portraits. Have all these people helped forge the identity of Goldchain? Do they still reside somewhere inside him?

The collective General Idea is represented by tongue-in-cheek photos showing the threesome as doctors, university graduates and poodles. In each case, the images reference the role of artists in society.

General Idea stars again in another new exhibition, Art Metropole: The Top 100, at the National Gallery. Back in the 1970s, General Idea started collecting the art-related flotsam and jetsam that passed through the members' lives: Correspondence, artist books, videos and experimental artworks. Within a few years, the collection, under the name of Art Metropole, held 13,000 objects bearing

the imprint, in one fashion or another, of such celebrated avant-garde artists as Yoko Ono, Sophie Calle, Marcel Duchamp, N.E. Thing, Michael Snow and Guerrilla Girls.

The 13,000 objects were donated to the National Gallery in 1999 on the condition an exhibition be mounted. Well, it has taken seven years, but here it is, or at least 100 selections from the collection. The show was curated by Kitty Scott, the former contemporary art curator at the gallery, and one of her assistants, Jonathan Shaughnessy.