Annual Report 2008-2009 - National Gallery of Canada

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