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Robert Amos: Gallery moving ahead by looking back

A new exhibition at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria looks at collecting policies there from 1951 to 1981.

robertamos.jpgA new exhibition at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria looks at collecting policies there from 1951 to 1981. It’s an eclectic mix of artworks that might slip under your radar, but a visit with curator Michelle Jacques enlightened me about its importance.

Jacques has been the chief curator in charge of the gallery’s collections for the past five years, and she is a wonderful asset to Victoria. Coming to us after many years at Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario, Jacques brings expertise and a thoughtful consideration to Victoria’s rather random collections, which are the chief asset of this gallery.

The AGGV is perhaps just a few months away from its biggest renovation project ever, at which time the gallery will be closed for at least a couple of years, and the collections will be stored off-site. This seemed to Jacques an appropriate time to consider the policies that brought us here, and as her guide she chose an “off the cuff” memoir written by Colin Graham, founding director, in 1981.

“As we look to the future,” Jacques told me, “we’ve been thinking a lot about how our activity relates to the early activity of the institution. Our trajectory hasn’t really changed that much, though in the 21st century it might look slightly different.

“Thinking about what the original collecting philosophy was, we can analyze how far off or how close we are now and how we want to move forward. Basically, what I discovered is we’re kind of on the same track.”

Some quotes from Graham are posted high on the walls. He wrote that he did not want a “completely Eurocentric collection,” and set his focus on local artists, regional art and Canadian art in general. Early collecting areas also included Inuit art and donations from South America and the South Pacific, among others.

“Asian art has become the great strength,” Jacques observed, “but we didn’t have great success in some other areas. So what are we going to do with them now?”

Victoria has a small number of early and excellent Inuit stone carvings. Do we gather more, or perhaps send them off to a museum that specializes in the field, such as the Winnipeg Art Gallery? They were first collected as ethnographic specimens, but now should stand on their merits as individual artworks and join the other elements of the collection. To make the point, Jacques has placed a monolithic wooden sculpture by Bob de Castro in proximity to a powerful serpentine stone woman carved by Joanassie Nowkawalk.

For many years, the gallery had a policy to leave the field of First Nations art to the Royal B.C. Museum (and later, the University of Victoria). But some early aboriginal prints and paintings were accessioned — two examples by Tony Hunt are on display. Now that contemporary native art is a growth area, should the gallery specifically develop this field through collecting and study in the future?

The same might be said of photography. Graham decided not to collect photographs (which are a huge part of Vancouver Art Gallery’s collection), and in the 1990s the gallery’s collection of prints by pictorialist photographer Harold Mortimer-Lamb was ceded to the Provincial Archives. A few with special relevance to the gallery’s collections, including portraits of Sophie Pemberton and Emily Carr, were retained. With no specific curatorial expertise in this field, what should the gallery do about collecting photographs?

Graham made a collection of European prints, acquired cheaply from the Ferdinand Roten Gallery, a “road show” operation that came to Victoria annually. Jacques exhibits four “restrikes,” etchings made from the original plates, but after the artist’s death.

“In this day and age, when we have access to different ways of looking at repros, do we need restrikes?” she wondered. They are likely candidates for “deaccessioning.” Is that a reality?

“We do deaccession,” she admitted. Director Jon Tupper recently culled the gallery’s extensive holdings of Walter J. Phillips woodcuts, and disposed of duplicates and some in poor condition. With the proceeds, he bought Karlukwees, a winter scene that is probably Phillips’ most famous print.

“I like to think we are going about it very responsibly,” Jacques said. Another Phillips print hangs beside an early collograph etching by Pat Martin Bates, who is “a completely under-recognized genius in printmaking,” as Jacques was quick to note.

In her thoughtful way, Jacques celebrates Graham’s success at attracting donations from artists — gifts of A.Y. Jackson and Arthur Lismer are on show — and from collectors. Maud Brown was the wife of Eric Brown, an early director of the National Gallery of Canada, and Graham persuaded her to donate generously.

Graham’s unpublished memoir — available for reading in the gallery — also shows his interest in cutting-edge modernist work, not in keeping with local tastes at the time. He bought what he could with money provided by the Women’s Committee Cultural Fund and the Canada Council. These days, the women’s committee is called the associates, and their contributions are used to support exhibitions. Jacques told me that the gallery had just received the last contribution toward purchases from the Canada Council, which will no longer provide funds for acquisitions.

Jacques’ professional and considered stewardship of the AGGV’s collection gives me confidence.

“We are taking a moment to review our past with a critical eye,” she has written, “so that we may step most successfully into the future.”

 

Moving Forward by Looking Back: The First 30 Years of Collecting Art at the AGGV, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1040 Moss St., aggv.ca, 250-384-4171, until Sept. 4.