Investing in Art

The recession sidelined the Canada Council Art Bank. But it may be back on the radar and buying art again soon.

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The recession was not kind to the Canada Council Art Bank, which manages a collection of some 17,000 works that it rents to corporate clients. But it’s hoping to get back on the arts community’s radar again in the next year to 18 months by staging its first open call to buy art since 2011.

Amy Jenkins, the head of the Art Bank, is putting together a kitty of $50,000 to $100,000 for the next big round of purchases, which will be based on recommendations by a peer jury of artists, curators and arts administrators from across Canada. In recognition of the seven-year gap, jurors may be asked to consider ways to fill gaps in the collection, rather than just focusing on very new works, she says.

The country’s economic slowdown meant fewer clients were renting works from the collection, valued at an estimated $71 million. According to the Art Bank’s mandate, it’s supposed to buy new art only with profits from its rentals.

But things are looking up.

“Sales are climbing and the economy is doing well,” Jenkins said in a recent interview at the Art Bank’s Ottawa headquarters, which oversees work by some 3,000 artists, including Westerners like Paul Bernhardt, Diana Thorneycroft, Amy Malbeuf, Liz Magor and Heather Benning. The Art Bank’s financial picture has also improved because the Canada Council now pays exhibition and outreach costs, freeing up more income from art rentals for new purchases.

But it’s nothing like the big-spending glory days when the Art Bank was founded in 1972, sustained by grants rather than profits.

“The Art Bank is just a shadow of itself,” says veteran Winnipeg artist Bill Lobchuk, who has sold pieces to the Art Bank and has also served on juries. He agrees with the policy to purchase only work deemed to be rentable. But he disagrees with the requirement to be self-sufficient. “That’s a screwed-up policy,” he says. “The Canada Council should be giving money to the Art Bank.”

Bill Kirby was the director of the Art Bank from 1981 to 1995 and then founded the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, which manages an online database about Canadian art. “It’s really out of my mind in the last 20 years, and that’s the way it is in the arts community,” says Kirby, also of Winnipeg. “Nobody thinks of it any more.”

Wendy Nelson, executive director of CARFAC Saskatchewan, the voice of the province’s professional artists, says she hears little these days about the Art Bank. “It had a higher profile in the past.”

Jenkins wants to change that. She is well connected in Ottawa, having bounced back and forth a few times between senior posts at the Art Bank and the National Gallery of Canada. And with several key jobs, including director, opening at the National Gallery in coming months, there’s speculation she could bounce again, perhaps even before a study that could recommend deaccessioning some work is completed.

The Art Bank experimented in 2000 with deaccessioning, allowing artists to buy back work and also donating pieces deemed unrentable, such as installations and videos, to art museums. The current study is examining what options, if any, the Art Bank should take to reduce its collection through buy-backs, sales, donations and other options.

A third of the Art Bank’s collection is from artists born or living in Western Canada, which is in line with the West’s share of the country’s total population. The last major purchase in 2011 saw 52 works purchased. Eleven were from artists living in the West.

Since 2011, so-called discretionary funds – profits of less than $50,000 a year can be used without going through a jury – were used to purchase 19 works. Seven of those works were from Western artists.

The last of those works, purchased this year, were three decorative ceramic objects by the late Jack Sures, of Regina. In 2016, in recognition of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a handful of works by Indigenous artists were also purchased. ■