AGO art curators can't have it both ways

When you ask wealthy donors for their opinions, don't feign surprise when they're offered up

Long before the art world became a business, families like the Medici’s have often played a transformational role in the life of a promising — even renowned — artist. Everybody benefitted, whatever their motivations.

The modern era knows a different reality, but most public art institutions owe much of their standing and solvency to the wealthy donors of a more current vintage. The stories currently leaking out of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) demonstrate just how dangerous and self-defeating it is when staff curators, and the artists themselves, try to have it both ways: the AGO story isn’t about artistic freedom, merely a simple breach of contract.

As an artist, you are free to express yourself on a canvass or negative as the moment moves you. Bend the wire or sculpt the plaster with passion. Be as political or subtle as you wish. How I interpret your work may either offend or delight you, but your freedom to create something from the bottom of your soul is no less important than my licence to quietly dismiss — or loudly embrace — the fruits of that same labour.

I could write an essay on that theme alone, and it definitely warrants more depth than time allows, but the recent bunfight at the AGO exposes some of the fundamental challenges that Canada’s cultural scene brings upon itself more regularly than most appreciate.

According to a series of articles by The Globe and Mail’s Josh O’Kane, the AGO’s volunteer contemporary collections committee is being disbanded after it voted 11-9 against acquiring a work by Nan Goldin, in conjunction with the Vancouver Art Gallery and Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center.

I only started paying attention in the late ‘90’s, but there always seems to be some mini-scandal or tug-of-war within this or that august Canadian institution. The National Gallery fired a white male named Stephen Gritt a few years ago, along with three other senior staff members, in an effort to “improve equity and inclusion in its workforce as part of its strategic plan.” The Museum of Civilization pushed a female researcher out following “a lengthy investigation into allegations of bullying and harassment.” The Museum of History parted ways with its CEO for reasons that sound no more complex than hurt feelings.

Do you sense a pattern here? A self-destructive fusion of academic independence, taxpayer funding, modest accountability, little transparency and no definition of what success looks like — unlike a business or family unit, where you’re judged on a daily basis.

Things are already hard enough for the cultural community without an ongoing series of self-inflicted wounds, and I say that as a concerned fan.

For decades, the Canadian arts universe has been challenged with growing its audience, mounting new productions, diversifying collections or even keeping the doors open, whether it be the Canadian Opera Company, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the Power Plant or the Art Gallery of Ontario, to name but four high profile institutions within the GTA.

No matter who is in government, or at the helm of XYZ corporation, personal/corporate donations, along with some public funding, are an essential component in sustaining the region’s artistic and cultural institutions.

If you took in Verdi’s Rigoletto the other night at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, you benefitted from generations of dedicated donors. If you’re either a BMO client or shareholder, you can feel good that Canada’s oldest bank sponsored the COC’s season; they did it partly for marketing purposes, for sure, but also because the team there knows that our country deserves a national champion in this narrow artistic genre.

Despite the fact that opera is not going to appeal to nearly as many Torontonians as either the Raptors (Scotiabank) or Blue Jays (TD), for example. That’s community leadership.

Anyone who thinks the staff at the AGO should be able to buy and hang whatever works of art suit them on any given day must answer three simple questions:

• will the viewing public care enough about the acquisition to buy a ticket and tromp down to Dundas Street West to see the new piece?

• how will the AGO pay for the work?

• who are the gallery staff accountable to?

Whether it be the AGO, MOCA or ROM, there never seems to be enough taxpayer support or ticket sales to fund the operation, facility upkeep and new acquisitions on an annual basis.

Donations make up the difference, and are particularly essential to capital campaigns as well as the purchases of important new works or mounting new productions.

In its wisdom, the AGO set-up a series of new “committees” some years ago in an effort to broaden the gallery’s network of future supporters. If you were interested in art in general, you might be asked to join the “New Group,” named to reflect the reality that the gallery needed to draw in a new generation of donors and future Board member candidates as the city-builders of the 1960-90s began to graduate to that museum in the sky.

If you loved photography or Contemporary Art, there would soon be a home for you, too. It was a great idea, and the invitees were chosen based upon their prior collecting history (still a novelty within the crowd aged 40-60, sadly) and their propensity to materially support area charities.

The appeal included an annual individual donation to the AGO of $10,000, $25,000 or $50k, part of which would be used to acquire a new work. The AGO’s experts would offer up three or four suggestions that filled this or that alleged hole within the gallery’s existing collection, and the committee would vote on which piece to buy (say $75k - $500k per piece) with their communal capital.

Everybody comes out a winner, pretty much (I’ll get to that).

The AGO Curator in question has the opportunity to add something “important” or timely to their existing collection, the often-newbie donors help grow the AGO’s relevance to both the broader public and within the competitive international gallery circuit, and the artist and their rep benefits from being able to announce that a globally-recognized art institution thought their work was sufficiently important to snap it up. In the event the artist hadn’t yet been collected by a respected institution, this news will likely increase the value of everything that that same artist will produce thereafter.

The only person who might come out grumpy in all of this is the 2nd or 3rd generation donor who wonders why their parent or grandparent’s previously-donated works continue to sit in the AGO’s storage — sometimes for decades. They might make the fair point that the gallery doesn’t need to buy new stuff when it already has thousands of quality pieces in its collection that aren’t on display for lack of wall space.

That’s why one must respect the genius of Lord Thomson of Fleet, who donated the physical space needed so that the AGO could show the highlights of his unbeatable collection in perpetuity. I feel lucky that Canada has people who are prepared to share their hard work for our collective enjoyment, and I respect the fact that such gifts come with specific terms.

If you don’t like my terms, don’t ask for my collection.

As one of Canada’s richest men, it would have been nothing for Lord Thomson to buy a building near the AGO site and hang his pictures there instead, as France’s Francois Pinault did when he leased the Bourse de Commerce in Paris to showcase his contemporary collection. As far as Mr. Pinault (who also loves Penn’s Small Trades series) was concerned, this initiative would “‘complement’ Paris’s existing institutions.”

The reality of how public institutions have the good fortune to come into possession of important works of art is lost in all of The Globe and Mail’s coverage. The taxpayer seems neither interested nor able to provide whatever it is that the AGO might need in any given year. That leaves the AGO Board and management with two choices: tread water, or find corporate or individual donors that are prepared to make up the difference between the cost of the operation and the dollars needed to make it all work over a sustainable horizon.

Increasing ticket prices won’t do it, for accessibility is a key part of the mandate of these institutions. Given the state of Ontario’s healthcare system, it’s tough to argue that the Treasury Board President should divert $1 million, let alone $50 million, of the Provincial budget so that the AGO staff can buy some new works.

That’s why these committees made so much sense for the AGO. The institution broadened its base of future Board talent, raised money for new acquisitions, and taught a few us more about the art world than we knew otherwise. The exposure through those sessions had spin-off effects too, for both local galleries and their artists. People discovered new artists, they sponsored local shows, and raised money for smaller showings.

The committee’s contract was simple: the AGO staff would select relevant pieces, the funds would be raised around the table in a blind pool format, and the 12 or 20 committee members would vote on which piece they thought made sense. If there were several choices, or just a single option, donor democracy would prevail.

That’s why I was so disappointed to see the knives come out when the AGO’s 20-member modern and contemporary collections committee exercised that right. For an AGO spokeswoman to claim to The Globe that “personal political views were brought into the conversation…this is not intended to be part of the process,” the implication was that the majority of committee members weren't concerned about what was best for the institution when they voted to not acquire something with their own money.

I doubt that very much.

If cultural institutions are indifferent to what taxpayers / donors think — my advice is simple: don't take money from the public purse, nor solicit large private donations. Find an art-lover who doesn’t care what you do with their capital; that strategy will work until one of you staffers gets accused by a colleague for “bullying them” into acquiring something “unacceptable,” which will kick-off a multi-year investigation into the alleged toxic workplace. Just as we have seen play out in Philadelphia, Ottawa and Gatineau in recent years.

As for the attacks against Judy Schulich, a committee member and AGO Trustee, I can’t think of anyone in Canada better equipped to participate in a discussion about the pros and cons of adding this piece of art versus that to an important collection. The Globe refers to her as a “philanthropy executive,” but she’s so much more than that in this context. Not only was she trained at Christie’s New York in the art market and connoisseurship, few private collectors have done more this century to encourage and promote Canadian artists through their own collecting choices and philanthropic efforts than Ms. Schulich.

As donors and change agents, the Schulich family have touched the lives of most Canadians at some point in recent years.

There’s the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western, you’ve got the Schulich School of Business at York University, UofC’s Schulich Engineering School, the Schulich Library of Physical Sciences, Life Sciences and Engineering at McGill and the Schulich Heart Program at Sunnybrook Hospital. The heralded Schulich Leaders Program, financing 7,000 STEM scholarships, along with the Schulich Builders program for skilled trades programs at Ontario colleges.

The Schulich family is even sponsoring the CoC’s orchestra this season. Do you know why that is? Because opera ticket prices aren’t sufficient for Canada’s largest city to afford to pay its cellists.

I understand why many on the AGO’s contemporary collections committee felt that Nan Goldin’s “views on Israel were ‘offensive’ and ‘antisemitic.’” I also appreciate that her fans would find it convenient to throw around words like “censorship,” as though global art buyers and various museums don’t make a thousand decisions each day about what to buy, sell and hang for reasons that we may not all like. It also comes as no surprise that Ms. Goldin is trying to pressure both the AGO Board and Premier Doug Ford with an online petition, according to the Globe’s reporting.

In an effort to mollify a small minority, the AGO has “disbanded” the committee — handing a pyrrhic victory to folks who have their own political agenda at work, even if there will be two new committees in its place. The AGO staff who recommended the acquisition may not like that their own committee members decided not to buy an additional Goldin piece (the AGO already has three Goldin works in its collection), but that was the deal it made when it solicited the funds from a representative group of GTA art donors.

To leak all of this inside baseball to the media only serves to scare away future donors who will have reason to fear that someone will call the press as soon as they don’t like how a vote goes at some point down the road.

That institutions in two of North America’s most left-leaning cities (the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Minneapolis-based Walker Art Center) were non-plussed by Ms. Goldin’s unfounded claims of Israeli “genocide” only confirms that this particular acquisition process was infused with a political undercurrent throughout. The folks who disagreed with the outcome and quit the committee are welcome to take their talents elsewhere — that’s how volunteer organizations work. Whether it’s a political party, the AGO or a GTHL hockey team coaching spot; you sometimes vote with your feet.

There are two issues at work here, and neither have anything to do with academic freedom — a concept that isn’t easily applied at an art gallery in any event.

First, since the days of the Medici’s, if not before, society — artists in particular — has benefitted from the generosity of legendary donors like Judy Schulich.

Second, when broadcasting its relationships with banks such as RBC, the AGO claims that such “corporate partnerships are catalysts for creation, propelling new stories and new perspectives.” AGO staff know full well that RBC is a big fan of Canadian art, but that doesn’t give them licence to do anything that might be inconsistent with the RBC brand; unless they have a viable plan to find someone else to fill their big corporate shoes when the donor agreement ends in three year’s time.

Galleries can’t survive — let alone thrive — without a small army of dedicated donors and volunteers, and they’re particularly blessed when they can land the talents of someone with true art world bonafides, such as Ms. Schulich. To let anyone cast aspersions on her role in this very democratic process will do far more long-lasting damage to the institution than could ever flow from passing on a minor piece by one of the thousands of worthy artists who’d love to have their work hang — if only briefly — on the walls of the Art Gallery of Ontario.

My advice for the AGO leadership is to fix this all before making what will most certainly be a generational mistake. You created the committee. You invited the donors. You took their money and empowered the group to make choices about art acquisition.

That’s what they did.

And don’t dig around in some Code of Conduct manual to make it appear that committee members weren’t allowed to bring their lived experiences to bear; Trustees are chosen because of that very lived experience, and we taxpayers and minor donors take much comfort from their presence.

Screw with that, or try to shame the best that Canadian philanthropy has to offer, and you’re free to move along to Boston, Philadelphia or some other stop on your career path. Soon after your arrival, I suspect you’ll find that those communities share this same ethos.

MRM

(disclosure: this post, like all blogs, is an Opinion Piece; I know some of the players involved personally, and have also donated to several of the organizations cited above over the years. No information has been shared that was of a confidential nature.)

(photo: Les Garçons Bouchers, Paris 1950, by Irving Penn)