globeandmail.com: Harper's gallery gambit 'stagecraft,' critic says - The Diigo Meta page

• 14 Nov 07
  

  Yule Heibel

  art_museum arts_funding canada competition p3s politics portrait_gallery public_buildings

  • The cities from whom Ottawa is requesting proposals from developers this spring are Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Ottawa-Gatineau, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City and Halifax.
  • "Now we're engaged in this distasteful playing off of one city against another," Frenkel said
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  • • Alain Pineau, executive director of the Canadian Conference of the Arts, said he thinks the notion of basing a national institution outside Ottawa is "interesting" but it needs to be framed as part of "a conversation and debate" about museum policy - something the Tories have not done even though they called for same while in opposition. Like Frenkel, Pineau questioned "the realism of anything moving seriously [on the gallery] given the current political climate and the deadlines imposed on the call for tenders."

    • The hope is the winning city can be named within the next eight or nine months, with construction of gallery completed by 2011 or 2012 - a decade after the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien first announced it would build the gallery in the reconstituted 1932 Beaux Arts-style building on Wellington. The original construction cost for the refurbishment was $22-million, but by spring, 2006, the overall cost had risen to $45-million, which includes an estimated $11-million that has already spent on design, site preparation and management fees.

      
      

      Last fall, numerous media reports indicated the Tories had killed the project. However, nothing official was declared and the resultant vacuum was filled with reports that the minority Harper government was considering establishing the gallery as, variously, an online museum, a touring showcase and, finally, as a permanent fixture in the huge EnCana Centre now under construction in downtown Calgary. (The portrait gallery is currently overseen by Library and Archives Canada, a Crown corporation, and its collection stored in a climate-controlled vault in Gatineau, Que.)

    • With federal government offices closed yesterday for the Remembrance Day holiday, Canadian Heritage was unable to provide details as to how the bidding scheme would work or what budget might be attached to it. A brochure posted on the portrait gallery's website simply announces: "We are in search of the perfect host community" and describes the competition as "a rare and exciting opportunity" because of the tourism potential, without explaining how a subsidized public institution such as a national museum could be turned into a profit-making model for a private developer - if, in fact, this is the government's concept.
    • John McAvity, executive director of the Canadian Museums Association, called the Tory plan "innovative" and one that at least puts the portrait gallery "back on the radar screen." But he urged the government to include smaller cities such as Charlottetown, Fredericton, Saint John and Regina in the running.
    • The CMA last year, in a presentation to the Harper government, called for an additional $75-million in funding to the not-for-profit museums and galleries sector. Yesterday McAvity called the potential for "greater corporate involvement . . . a very positive sign." The "main issue is governance. . . the collection must be preserved and governed in the public interest, not the private interest . . . 'Let's see where this goes,' is my philosophy."

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