Annual Report 2008-2009 - National Gallery of Canada

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Your contributions mean much. I extend, also, a very warm welcome to newly appointed board members Allan Benoit, Howard Kroon, and Liza Maheu, who bring to the table an impressive combination of experience and expertise. For their tireless work and their ongoing success in garnering support from the wider community for the Gallery’s endeavours, I am grateful to the National Gallery of Canada Foundation, and to its capable and dedicated chair, Thomas d’Aquino, its Board of Directors, its President and CEO Marie Claire Morin, and her team. Equally appreciated are the remarkable efforts of the Volunteers’ Circle, which deserves heartfelt congratulations on its recent 50th anniversary, an occasion that was celebrated with a fittingly grand day of festivities in the fall. It is with honour and great esteem that I bid farewell to Pierre Théberge, whose leadership, vision and dedication as director will leave a lasting mark on this institution, as well as on the Gallery’s place in the visual arts and art history communities. The board undertook an extensive international search to replace Mr. Théberge, and was fortunate to find the path that led to Marc Mayer, most recently director of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, as well as a former director of the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto and former Deputy Director for Art at the Brooklyn Museum. With his vast knowledge of the field of contemporary art, his international career, and his intellect and outstanding energy, I have no doubt Mr. Mayer will be able to deftly lead the Gallery down what promises to be a challenging road through troubling economic times. Finally, may my board colleagues and I look forward to continued collaboration with the Department of Canadian Heritage and its Minister, the Honourable James Moore, and with the other government agencies that support our efforts here. We deeply appreciate your contributions to this marvellous institution. 6 A Word from the Chairperson, Board of Trustees
Letter from the Director Marc Mayer I am pleased and honoured to share here the most notable accomplishments from a very active and fruitful year. As the Gallery’s new director, I wish to pass on my sincere thanks and congratulations to my predecessor Mr. Pierre Théberge for all his achievements. I must also acknowledge Mr. Donald Sobey, the former chair of the Board of Trustees, for his warm welcome, his support upon my arrival, and his ongoing commitment to the success of the National Gallery. I am fortunate to find myself at the helm of an institution that embodies a buoyant energy that belies its sheer size and importance. This year, our management and staff, supported by our dedicated Board of Trustees, fully applied their expertise and enthusiasm toward a succession of inspired acquisitions and watershed exhibitions. These, combined with new public program initiatives and a thorough assessment of the Gallery’s education programming, exemplifies our raison d’être: to foster awareness, enjoyment and understanding of art among all Canadians. You do not have to look hard to encounter the Gallery’s abundant success in this regard: 266,379 visitors attended 18 exhibitions on tour from the Gallery and CMCP. Among these, 11 exhibitions completed successful presentations, including The Drawings and Paintings of Daphne Odjig: A Retrospective Exhibition, co-organized with the Art Gallery of Sudbury, an important and overdue look at the career of a preeminent Aboriginal artist. Like another popular touring show this year, Joe Fafard – created in partnership with the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina – the Odjig exhibition is a great example of what we can achieve through collaboration: a broader perspective into the study and presentation of art. Our relationships with other museums and galleries allow us to reach more deeply into our country’s vibrant communities of artists, curators, researchers, and art lovers. Our exhibition program in Ottawa, meanwhile, garnered remarkable attention – including generous national and international media coverage – and exceeded attendance projections well before the close of the fiscal year. The major summer exhibition, The 1930s: The Making of “The New Man,” formed an unflinching investigation into the impact of that decade’s troubling political climate on the visual arts. Organized by an international committee chaired by the Gallery’s former director Pierre Théberge, and presented by the National Gallery of Canada Foundation Circle Patrons, The 1930s was made possible through loans from prestigious public and private collections on both continents. The exquisite winter exhibition Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture, unprecedented in its examination of the 17th-century Italian master, also drew on significant international relationships. Co-organized by the Gallery with the J. Paul Getty Museum, this exhibition included many works never before seen outside of Italy. We also engaged wholeheartedly with the present through Utopia / Dystopia: The Photographs of Geoffrey James, presented by Pratt & Whitney Canada, the Shawinigan exhibition Real Life: Ron Mueck and Guy Ben-Ner, and the innovative Caught in the Act: The Viewer as Performer, which featured 17 works by 11 influential contempor ary Canadian artists. One of the highlights of this show was Theatre of Cruelty, by the internationally recognized Vancouver artist Geoffrey Farmer. Ambitious and politically charged, this work formed a key addition to the Gallery’s permanent collection this year. Its purchase was made possible through the NGC Foundation’s Audain Endowment for Contemporary Canadian Art, the second significant acquisition facilitated by this endowment, which was established by Michael Audain and Yoshiko Karasawa. We are greatly indebted for their commitment to the enrichment of Canadian culture. Research and scholarly enquiry has its own part to play in this enrichment. Volume six of the Review of the National Gallery of Canada was published this year thanks to the Dorothea and Margaret Graham Endowment of the NGC Foundation and featured groundbreaking essays on the French Impressionist master Claude Monet; a newly discovered painting by 19th-century Quebecois artist Antoine Plamondon; and several notable works from the Gallery’s collection. The Gallery’s leadership role in the realms of the collection, study and dissemination of art extends through its affiliate, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, focused purely on the medium of photography as practiced today in Canada. Due to ongoing construction on the National Capital Commission property that has long housed CMCP, a decision was made to permanently move CMCP’s programming directly into the Gallery. This move grants CMCP exhibition space equal in size to that it left behind and a significantly increased audience. CMCP mounted Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal Artists, at the NGC, which it organized in collaboration with the Gallery’s new Indigenous curator-in-residence, Stephen Loft. 7
Page 1 and 2: Annual Report 2008-09 National Gall
Page 3 and 4: Annual Report 2008-09 National Gall
Page 5 and 6: Distinct values Accessibility. Prog
Page 7: A Word from the Chairperson, Board
Page 11 and 12: Supporting Friends and Donors of th
Page 14: Bringing Canada to the World and th
Page 18 and 19: The Gallery’s family of websites
Page 20: “We live in a time of the created
Page 24: Rescued from the Vault The Gallery
Page 27 and 28: Top right: The exhibition Bernini a
Page 29 and 30: Rodney Graham Canadian, born 1949 T
Page 31 and 32: Robert Field British, c. 1769-1819
Page 33 and 34: Barbara Morgan American, 1900-1992
Page 35 and 36: 33 Jean Benoît Canadian, born 1922
Page 37 and 38: 35 Emily Carr Canadian, 1871-1945 A
Page 39 and 40: Board of Trustees 1 April 2008 to 3
Page 41 and 42: Senior Management and Managers Seni
Page 43 and 44: Gifts to the Library included a fin
Page 45 and 46: The web-accessible Archives databas
Page 47 and 48: During the same period, the Canadia
Page 49 and 50: Education Priority: Offer a rich ca
Page 51 and 52: Communications Priority: Enhance ma
Page 53 and 54: • Installation of remote surveill
Page 55 and 56: Revenue Generation Priority: Increa
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Favell, Rosalie (Métis, born 1958)
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Photographs Gifts Gerdes, Etta (Ger
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Levinstein, Leon (American, 1908-19
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LOANS - NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADA
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Quebec Musée national des beaux‐
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NEW YORK New York Americas Society
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Real Life: Ron Mueck and Guy Ben-Ne
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Certain operating costs have increa
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Financial Statements 2008 2009 73
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Balance Sheet as at 31 March (in th
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Statement of Comprehensive Income F
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2. SIGNIFICANT ACCOUNTING POLICIES
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3. Changes in Accounting Policies (
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8. ACCOUNTS PAYABLE AND ACCRUED LIA
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14. CAPITAL MANAGEMENT The Gallery
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18. FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS AND EXPOS
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Schedule of Operating Revenue and C
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Letter from the Chair of the Board
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Throughout the year, we had the gre
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BOARD OF DIRECTORS Chair Thomas P.
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Tyler Family Charitable Foundation
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KPMG s.r.l. Comptables agréés 160
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Photo Credits All photographs have
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