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Posted Jul 26, 2008, 6:09 PM
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Join Date: May 2007
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Quote:
One visionary + 21 days + 650 works of art = a Big Gift for Calgary
MARSHA LEDERMAN
Globe and Mail Update
July 26, 2008 at 8:28 AM EDT
CALGARY — On Dec. 10, 2007, Jeffrey Spalding began a new job at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, where he was once the art curator. This time he would be running the place as president and CEO.
That same day, Spalding was contacted by several people offering donations to the Glenbow's collection. The calls kept coming from collectors, artists and philanthropists. Over the course of 21 days at the height of the holiday season, 70 separate donors promised the museum more than 650 works of art valued at more than $2-million.
"I was overwhelmed," Spalding said during an interview in his museum office this week. "I knew something would happen, but I think it was a bit surprising, to say the least, that it would be to this degree."
Among the donations: a six-foot fibreglass green soldier created by Douglas Coupland; Food and Shelter by celebrated native Canadian artist Carl Beam; and a four-panel work, Bones, by Attila Richard Lukacs, whose collectors include Sir Elton John.
Within three or four days of his arrival, Spalding had an idea: an exhibition that would showcase the donated works.
He made it happen - The Big Gift opens to the public at the Glenbow today. It is the third, and largest, of three Big Gift components, two of which opened earlier this summer at the Nickle Arts Museum at the University of Calgary, and at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery (IKG) at the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD).
Spalding has worked as a director and curator at several institutions (most recently at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia) and is an artist himself. His connections in Canadian art are enviable, and his return to Calgary (he left in a huff in 1982 after the Glenbow cancelled a Gerhard Richter show) was seen as both an indication of a cultural explosion accompanying the city's economic boom, and a promise that his presence would push forward an arts agenda.
"Jeffrey is both a confirmation and a catalyst," says Christine Sowiak, curator of art at the Nickle. "He has a belief in Calgary as a real centre for arts and for big things."
The involvement of the Nickle and IKG was as much about promoting a spirit of collaboration within the city's tightly knit arts community as it was about finding the space to display as many of the works as possible.
"You want to say thanks as quickly as you can and as big as you can, because that's a pretty phenomenal outpouring. And the best way to do that is to use the work," says Sowiak.
"Of course, I thought it would be next year," she adds with a laugh, "but it was perfect to have it done for this year and have it so immediate and fresh."
The three-pronged exhibition came together with lightning speed. The first major collaborative meeting was held at the Glenbow in March, and the first part of the show was installed at the Nickle in June.
"If you think you can do it, don't wait two years," says IKG director/curator Wayne Baerwaldt. "Now's the time you should have people enthused about contemporary culture here."
The Glenbow portion of the exhibition features donated works by Canadian artists such as Ed Burtynsky, Ken Lum and Kim Adams, and international artists including David Hockney and Marcel van Eeden. Quyen Hoang, the Glenbow's art curator, says she wanted to reflect the diversity of both the gifts and the donors - as well as present some of the merging ideas and issues explored in the works. For example, she has installed Nils Udo's Red Boy in Forest - a photographic exploration of utopia - next to Dan Kopp's apocalyptic-feeling work, Orange Divide.
At the IKG, Baerwaldt has created a single-room exhibition of just over 40 works that came primarily from two Toronto donors and also borrowed heavily from the Glenbow's historical collection. The show offers the unlikely combination of a Paul P. portrait and a Robert Bateman bird painting hung next to a Lynne Cohen photograph.
"I wanted to be very playful, especially for the students here," Baerwaldt said this week at the gallery on ACAD's campus. "I wanted [them] to know there are other ways of putting together a show."
At the Nickle, only the East Gallery portion of the show will continue through the summer. Consisting wholly of works by Alberta artist Peter von Tiesenhausen, the gallery is dominated by his massive (approximately 18 metres long by four metres high) Wall of Water - a pending acquisition tied to a number of other donated works by the same artist.
"I knew from the description on paper exactly where it should go and that I wanted it in the show, because it's the kind of piece that's kind of made for our space," Sowiak said this week.
The Nickle was given the first pick, so Sowiak studied the 80-plus-page list of Glenbow donations and then spent time hunting through the vault. "It was just really fun going shopping with a list of 650 works," she says. "It was like being given a grocery cart and told 'okay you have five minutes to spend $10,000 in this store.'"
While the volume of donations may be "stunning" as several of those involved describe it, it is not entirely a surprise to anyone who has followed Spalding's career. He has made it a goal to increase the collections at the various institutions where he has worked. Take the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery: when Spalding arrived in 1982, the collection totalled just over 200 works. When he left in 1999, it had increased to 13,000.
"I actually don't collect art," he says. "I collect collectors." Spalding also collects artists. Shortly after his appointment at the Glenbow, he sent out an e-mail to artists, soliciting donations. Among those who responded was Richard Prince. The Vancouver artist offered his installation Northern Lights - Magic Lantern. "If artists have work that they want to be seen, they do what they can to make sure that others can see it," Prince says. "You don't make work to put it in the closet."
Beyond thanking the donors for their gifts and offering a big gift to the city of Calgary, this show is also very much about sending a signal: the Glenbow is serious about collecting and exhibiting visual art, and Spalding has proposed a satellite location in which to do that.
"I would do anything to help Jeffrey make the Glenbow part of the [contemporary art] community again," says Baerwaldt. "A lot of us wanted to make sure that we could do something to support this idea that contemporary art is on the agenda again."
The gift keeps getting bigger. By this week, the number of donations accepted by the Glenbow (not every offer is approved) has reached more than 920, and the museum will consider another 50 or 60 offers at its next meeting in September. "Every day feels like Christmas," Spalding says.
"I think that people have waited for a long time to see Calgary, which is one of our major cities, participate equally with other major cities in the country," he adds. "So in a sense I think the floodgates opened and it really is about confirming the obvious: Calgary is a centre that matters to the country."
The Big Gift is on at the Glenbow Museum until Sept. 14, at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery until Aug. 30 and at the Nickle Arts Museum (East Gallery portion only) until Sept. 27.
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Big things happening at the Glenbow!
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