Editor, The Hub
Linda Myles Gallinger, Chair of the Tom Thomson Gallery Board is quoted as saying in the SunTimes, May 20 that the Tom Thomson Gallery Board will have to undertake a complete rethink of their plans for needed expansion of the facility. This is good.
We speak as 45 year members of the Tom Thomson Gallery, and as active participants in the life of the gallery over that time. We both have been members of the Board, Judy has been Chair of the Board twice and Ken has been City Council appointee. We continue to be seriously engaged and interested in gallery plans, especially the gallery’s future.
We make the following three points with respect to the much-needed review:
1. The main purpose of the gallery, on which all other concerns and activities depend, is the protection and presentation of the 2600 piece $16M (estimated) collection. The gallery has indicated that both its insurers and Canadian Cultural Properties require a larger above ground repository. We think the gallery could look to storing the collection off-site as a suitable, logical and convenient solution, consistent with its Cultural Properties A rating. No one has spoken to this idea at any of the meetings we’ve attended. The items in the collection need not physically be on site. Gallery staff have recently completed the catalogue of the collection. It is part of a nationwide computerized program which allows easy access to artworks in public collections.
World wide, art galleries and museums have stored their collections off-site, for the simple reason that their space limitations prevent them from doing otherwise. There’s only so much downtown space available at the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Smithsonian. They use off-site storage.
With the collection moved elsewhere, a large space becomes available in the existing building. Add to that the Rice/Bethune House and there becomes ample space for an imaginative design.
2. Every public “consultation” has brought forward the idea of a not-for-profit incorporation. The incorporation idea assumes a control of the gallery’s collection. Without the collection, a new incorporated gallery is nothing but a shell. The ownership of the collection is vested in the city of OS, and the Council is its present trustee. Council could hand off the trusteeship to others, but it cannot break faith with the citizens of OS by handing over a $16.5M asset to an untried, undefined entity. We are heartened by the fact that recent Council discussion favours maintaining the existing custodial responsibility which the gallery has historically held.
The collection not only represents a present asset, but it is also a legacy from the past. Donors have given valuable artworks with the understanding that the people of Owen Sound would be the beneficiaries. This is a gift which cannot be given away.
The incorporation idea invites problems. As stated in Councillor Greig’s question to Mr. Warren at Monday’s Council meeting (May 11, 2015), donated works would fall into 2 categories of holdings: one encompassing the collection up until the time of incorporation and the other under the terms of a new incorporated entity. The question arises as to whether there would be a choice for the donor. This adds more confusion and complication.
We would sincerely recommend that the entire discussion of incorporation be shelved. The collection and its preservation do not depend on incorporation. The collection depends on being better and more safely housed. And this is the direction in which the gallery Board should be moving!
3. The Gallery Board must include the community in its deliberations. They will, no doubt, find a pool of good will which the Board needs to access by bringing those constituents on side to a single purpose. To reiterate, that purpose is (and must always be) the preservation and presentation of the existing collection. The Board must conceive of a strategy which will be inclusive, bringing many parties within the community and its broader reaches, into the discussion of the gallery’s future. We refer here to the letter Leigh Greaves wrote to the Sun Times recently. The gallery must show community support. There’s much good will and practical experience to be gleaned beyond the narrow confines of the 8 people who are on the Board!
Finally, we’ve seen 3 versions of a plan since last October, none of which has gained acceptance, or puts at the centre the gallery collection -- the 4th largest collection of Thomson works in Canada. In “drilling down” it is our earnest hope that Ms Myles Gallinger and her Board intend to go back to first principles and start anew.
Ken and Judy Thomson
Leith