Putting Money Where Your Art Is

Innovative outreach programs and projects by art institutions in Canada show the value of putting dollars to culture, even in a tough economy.

By: Jasmeet Sidhu

These are delicate times for art funding. For those tasked with building collections and curating shows in the public interest atCanada’s signature galleries, justifying the allocation of public funds is increasingly a battlefield.

Of course, arts institutions can’t survive on the public interest alone and rely heavily on government funding to exist. But since the beginning of the global recession in 2008, cultural groups across the board have weathered significant funding cuts, watched endowments shrink and overall attendance reduce dramatically in an already strained financial model.

At the Art Gallery of Ontario, which last year received a little over a third of its funding from federal, provincial and municipal government grants, directors covet the spending flexibility of philanthropy dollars. Hard-won member donations and sponsorships don’t carry the same pressure to perform public good implicitly attached to state funding. These golden gifts accounted for close to 20% of the AGO’s 2009-10 operating budget (the balance came from gate receipts, food & beverage, some accounting upside and, well, don’t forget to exit through the gift shop).

A recent undertaking enabled by private donations: the restoration of Jean-Siméon Chardin’s Jar of Apricots, “one of the great masterpieces of the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario,” explains Jane Hilton, manager of major gifts for the AGO.

“The painting is generally in good condition but has suffered from at least two generations of harsh restoration treatment,” Hilton says of the 1758 still-life oil canvas. The restoration process will work on recovering the sense of depth and subtlety of colour and texture throughout the painting, which is only one of two Chardin paintings inCanada.

Chardin’s painting is an important piece in the AGO’s collection of nearly 80,000 works. However rewarding the results of its complex and painstaking restoration, it’s not the kind of box office draw that a large telecom company will stump for, nor as a Paris-based painter’s work, does it have Canadian content seal of approval. Thanks to the gift of a private donor, the work’s place inOntario’s local art culture has been restored.

In other markets, the very existence of a landmark gallery can be imperiled, and extraordinary dedication to pitching the value of public art is required simply to remain on the map. A prime example is the Art Gallery of Calgary, where Valerie Cooper accepted the position of President and CEO of the Art Gallery of Calgary seven years ago. Housed in a pair of heritage buildings after a move precipitated by an effort to greatly expand the gallery.

At the time, she says, she had no idea that this series of renovations and ambitious expansion plans had placed the gallery on the brink of financial disaster. “The gallery was bankrupt. The building was not completed. The space wasn’t really fit to be occupied by the public,” explains Cooper.

After first convincing the city not to take the drastic measure of closing the space, Cooper and her team went about raising $6.5 million from a variety of sources both public and private, enabling them to increase the operating budget nearly eight-fold to upwards of $2 million and turn the nearly abandoned gallery into one of the largest non-collecting contemporary art institutions in Canada.

This juggling act of constantly stitching together appeals to donors as diverse as banks, private donors, corporations and local governments is emblematic of the ongoing funding challenges facing Canada’s art industry, and a testament to the lifeblood that philanthropy dollars provide its continued existence.

Regardless of who they’re appealing to, it comes down to the age-old question: why fund art? Art institutions have risen to the challenge by turning that increased pressure on grassroots-level philanthropy into an opportunity to address the question head on. The results of that effort has seen the industry thriving in Canada, galleries creating innovative outreach programs that show the value of putting dollars to culture, even in a tough economy.

Toronto’s The Power Plant is one of the many that prove a dollar spent on the arts can go a long way to benefiting the local community. “We don’t live in an environment where we have the opportunity to be completely government funded,” says Shanitha Kachan, President of the Board of Directors. “But we don’t have a huge operation. We are able to seriously punch above our weight.”

By not housing a permanent collection and keeping operating costs down, The Power Plant instead focuses its donations for programs like its popular high school membership program, a ‘Power Kids’ art camp, and rotating exhibitions and lectures for emerging artists.

Philanthropy dollars have also enabled art institutions to become more accessible to the public, and recently allowed the AGO to loan 108 objects from its collection to New York City, Paris and San Francisco, putting the institution on the international stage and increasing itself as a destination for tourist dollars.

“Accessibility programs like Wednesday evenings for free to the public or free admission to high school students every day after 3 p.m., (these initiatives) are made possible through the contributions and support of our donors,” says Hilton.

“Even in cases where another museum borrows a work from the AGO’s collection and assumes the shipping costs, there is still work associated with the loan, such as preparing the work for travel and crating it, that are undertaken by the AGO (and helped funded by donors).”

Hilton and others fundraisers concede that providing donors with tangible results for their dollars is an on-going process, especially in a climate where donating to health, education or poverty-related causes may seem more pressing.

“Clearly the equation when you’re dealing with health in particular is a very clear transaction,” says Kachan. “The transaction that takes place when you support the arts, it’s a different conversation. If you’re interested in education, the arts speak to that. If you’re interested in outreach, the arts speak to that.”

Increasingly those donors are become younger and younger, with many cultural organizations already looking towards the next generation of supporters as the key to future survival.

“We really felt that by going to an under-40 audience and engaging them today, you start building a relationship that will be the long-term,” says Hilton on ‘AGO Next’, an under-40 membership program for the gallery. “It’s important to start a lifelong relationship and the younger that we can build loyalty and interest in audiences, the better.”

But for Stephen Delaney, the 24-year-old chair of the newly founded CreatiVenture Collective, engaging young people in art philanthropy should be about more than attending another cocktail party.

After he participated in a focus group to create a similar under-40 membership program for Canada’s National Ballet School, Delaney decided instead to help young patrons support smaller art institutions in a more hands-on way.

“What this idea of CreatiVenture speaks to is that small organizations don’t get enough attention from donors in the city,” says Delaney, whose group recently raised over $100,000 for the dance company Coleman Lemieux & Compagnie, helping to turn the Salvation Army Citadel building inRegentParkinto a practice and performance space for the embattled community.

All those in the industry agree no matter the means or the target, donating to the arts remains a worthy endeavor, and the results transcend quantifiable benefits. “Art is this transient thing that is just part of life, you can’t put a value on it,” argues Delaney. “At the end of the day you’re not buying hard assets with those dollars. You’re buying an experience for the people.”