Portrait Gallery of Canada

[Anton Wagner]

There is an interesting article in today's Globe and Mail on the Portrait
Gallery of Canada http://www.portraits.gc.ca recalling the struggles by the
ACTH a couple decades ago to establish a Canadian theatre museum. I found the
seach engine of the site awkward to use trying to find the 1930 bust of Herman
Voaden (I had to enter the search in the "Search All" section of "Search Library
and Archives" rather than in the website itself) but did finally find a photo
and description at
http://mikan3.archives.ca/pam/public_mikan/index.php?fuseaction=genitem.displayItem&lang=eng&rec_nbr=3018785&


VAL ROSS

Globe and Mail Update

July 31, 2007 at 3:55 AM EDT

Though it remains homeless -- the federal government's plans to move it to
Calgary having been quietly shelved -- the Portrait Gallery of Canada is very
much "active," according to the Department of Canadian Heritage. This month, it
launched a new, upgraded website - and its latest exhibition, The Four Indian
Kings.

>From March until June, visitors to Britain's popular National Portrait Gallery
in London got to inspect the 300-year-old portraits of red-cloaked Iroquois
leaders in the flesh, or rather oil paint. Even the Queen saw them. For now,
Canadian viewers must be content with an online version; our portrait gallery
still has only a virtual existence.

Why? Because last year, citing the need to cut frivolous spending, the Harper
government cancelled plans to complete the portrait gallery's half-renovated
home in the former U.S. embassy on Wellington Street in Ottawa, across from the
Parliament Buildings, and instead move it to an office complex being built for
the energy company Encana in Calgary. Ottawa spoke about the need to
decentralize cultural institutions and the importance of private partnerships.

This spring, around the time that London crowds were filing past faces from
Canada's heritage - the earliest known portraits of North American aboriginal
people in European art, commissioned by Queen Anne around 1710 from court
painter John Verelst - someone in Ottawa finally did the math on the Calgary
scheme.

With the city in the midst of an inflationary construction boom, the costs of
preparing the venue to gallery conditions (security and climate control) had
gone through the roof. Moreover, the property's owners said they expected to
charge market rates for rent. Surprise: The Calgary option died.

"The government is now exploring new sites and new options," a Heritage
spokesman said this week. However, no one expects the Harper government to
revert to the Wellington Street site. "They're hell-bent not to put them back,"
says a former civil servant with Library and Archives Canada, which is
responsible for the portrait gallery. "They must be very embarrassed."

When construction contracts for renovating Wellington Street lapsed, the cost of
moving anything into the site went way up, making a farce of the claim that the
2006 cancellation would save money.

The only way for this government to save face, observers agree, is for the
private sector to step forward.

Because big donors enthusiastically pushed the proposed Canadian Museum for
Human Rights in Winnipeg, the Harper government committed itself to throwing in
$100-million of federal money for the building, plus $22-million a year in
operating money. Such a partnership is what Tories want for the Portrait
Gallery.

But it's a vain hope. Unlike the National Gallery of Canada or the Museum for
Human Rights, the Portrait Gallery is not a Crown corporation. It maintains a
staff of about 15 curators, cataloguers and support services under the auspices
of the Librarian and Archivist of Canada, Ian Wilson, who in effect, ranks as a
deputy minister in charge of a government department. To appreciate the dilemma
for the Portrait Gallery, try persuading an arts patron to donate to a
government department.

Unlikely to find a private-sector saviour, the Portrait Gallery nevertheless has
big plans. Next year the Four Indian Kings show will tour, in its oil-painted
version, to venues across Canada. Portraits by photographer Yousuf Karsh from
the gallery's collection drew 150,000 visitors in France last year, and the
gallery wants to mount a Karsh show for the photographer's 2008 centenary.

And in May, 2008, the Portrait Gallery will host the Ottawa leg of a national
tour of F.H. Varley: Portraits into the Light (organized by the Varley Art
Gallery of Markham, Ont.). Space is being donated by Ottawa's Canadian Museum
of Nature. At least someone understands that if a gallery is to do this
exhibition thing properly, it requires walls and a roof.