As you know, reader, I'm mighty out of the loop sometimes. So it was this week when I read about Art Matters, a conference winding up Calgary's venerable High Performance Rodeo festival. The Calgary Herald has a report on the event, which sought to address the use of arts in social change.
But, but, but... that's not all. Not only was it a surprise to hear about the conference; it was a surprise to find out that Art Matters is also part of Governor General Michaëlle Jean's wider project Citizen Voices: Breaking Down Solitudes, which lists "Art Matters" and "Urban Arts" as two of its themes of interest.
As Jean said at the Art Matters conference,
"Art has the power to inspire, to heal, to transform, to rehabilitate, to bear witness and to make us believe there are better days ahead."
Such a different perspective from that of Stephen Harper, who has been quite silent on the arts issue since his much-blogged Beatles performance last year. (Oh, unless chopping funding to small arts mags -- some of those "citizen voices" -- makes a noise. Maybe someone should write a pop song for that?)
Image of Jean from the Calgary Herald
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Art Matters: Who Knew?
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Update: Our Nat'l Photo Museum Confirmed to Close
Yesterday, there was a very good article in the Ottawa Citizen on the fate of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, which I posted on earlier this week. The article gives full coverage to the question of whether the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, opened to great fanfare in 1992, is about to lose its building.
The answer: Most definitely. And the main culprit would seem to be the Harper government, which is taking over the site as meeting rooms and offices.
As the article makes clear, other factors did come into play such as water seepage. And it does note that the collection and programs of the CMCP will continue to exist at the National Gallery of Canada at 380 Sussex Drive. But the museum will no longer have its own standalone building.
My opinion on this-- shared by Ottawa photographer Jennifer Dickson and founding CMCP director Martha Langford, both of whom were interviewed in the article--is anger and disappointment.
As the article makes clear, the creation of the CMCP took many years, and million of dollars. In many ways was a triumph of the Mulroney Conservatives--Mulroney being a right-wing leader who, in retrospect, seems very arts-friendly compared to our current conservative PM Stephen Harper.
Given the Harper government's cancellation of the construction of our National Portrait Gallery, and the fact that he are taking over the CMCP site for the government's own purposes, this seems like just another instance of the current government's "eff you" stance towards arts and culture, both in Ottawa and elsewhere. (Remember Calgary and Edmonton submitted extensive proposals for the Portrait Gallery as well... this is not about east-west patronage tensions, just arts stuff.)
This decision to shut the gallery is also not about more theoretical questions around the validity of photography as its own medium in this multidisciplinary day and age. Were the museum to continue in its current site, I'm sure they'd continue to manage the analog-digital transitions of the medium just fine. (The exhibition they've got coming up at the NGC focuses on Scott McFarland, who uses digital techniques quite extensively.)
Relevant questions that still remain, however, might be the budgetary constraints imposed by former liberal PM Chretien's decision to build an outpost of the NGC in his home riding of Shawinigan. As well as, of course, Harper's desire to control messaging and media at all costs. (As the CBC recently reports, Harper's currently doing his second interviews with CNN and Fox in less than a month--but has refused to give national news service the Canadian Press an interview since December 2007. Pathetic.)
Image of outraged Ottawa photographer Jennifer Dickson from the Ottawa Citizen
Monday, November 10, 2008
Cancelling the National Portrait Gallery: A Picture of Conservative Mismanagement
This weekend, web commenters went nuts over government's suspiciously timed late-Friday announcement to cancel plans for a National Portrait Gallery.
Their rationale? The gallery would cost too much money in these tough economic times.
Whether individual Canadians like art or not, there's no way they should buy this flimsy rationale.
First, the Conservative Government considerably increased the costs (both money and time-as-money) of the project as a whole when they halted building the gallery in Ottawa in '06 and began a process of asking for bids from other cities. If they hadn't done this, the gallery--originally slated as a reno of a former American embassy--would probably be complete by now.
Second, since 2006, the bids received on the project (from Calgary and Edmonton as well as Ottawa) have depended heavily, if not entirely, on private funds. Where's this taxpayer burden Harper's so concerned about?
Commentary online surrounding these events has, as usual, gone both pro-arts and anti-arts.
Some commenters have said "just put the dang collection online for all Canadians to enjoy." You know what? I think this collection should be online too. But to put a collection online still takes money. And a fair bit of it, especially if you are going to present information in a well-designed, accessible way. And if you're going to promote it for all Canadians to be aware of for their enjoyment--that takes money too.
Plus, seeing a painting online is nothing like seeing it in person; if that were the case, perhaps we could suggest the Louvre would save money by just putting the Mona Lisa and all its other famed treasures online and closing up its bricks and mortar shop. Everybody okay with that? Is that pretty much the same? I didn't think so.
Some commenters have also said that this really is saving money in tough economic times. But as has already been pointed out, much of the money was to come from private, rather than public, coffers. And if the conservatives really cared about overall cost of the project in the first place, they should have let it go ahead in Ottawa, where plans were already in place, as well as the collection and staff needed to care for it.
Further, an argument could be made that in these tough economic times, the project would provide much-needed construction jobs, as well as jobs in education, service and design. It would also provide, when it is complete, a low-cost-to-free form of recreation to hardworking Canadians.
Some commenters have also insinuated that the Harper gov is suppressing the collection to keep Canadians from being aware of their left-leaning history. I don't want to tag them with such divisive philistinism at this point in time--though the fact that Harper only hangs images of himself in the Conservative offices does much to support this thesis. (Thanks to Simpleposie for the link.)
Rather, I chalk up this sheepishly timed announcement as evidence that the government is continuing to use culture as a wedge issue. This is highly regrettable, because even if the Conservatives aren't trying to "keep Canadians from their history" that is the ultimate result.
I won't even get into the PM's own elitist double standard of being able to hang publicly owned works in his residence while keeping them from the public's own view. After all, I'm sure he'll be putting a stop to any repairs at 24 Sussex for financial reasons soon too... right?
Image of the former US embassy originally slated to be Canada's National Portrait Gallery from Canwest News Service/National Post
