Cultural planner Jonathan Browns stands in front of Shahla Bahram’s plank art work at city hall gallery.
Local artists are hoping that the newest acquisitions in the city of Ottawa’s public art collection will convince both the city and potential buyers that Ottawa artists are worth supporting.
Collection’s Cabinet, now on display in city hall, showcases work by local artists. Many of the pieces will later go on display in municipal properties.
Jonathan Browns, cultural planner of the collection, says that the goal of the exhibit is to showcase private works of art in a public space.
Pat Durr, an artist whose work is on display, says she has already seen a very positive response to the exhibit.
She says the response “will hopefully show council that there is concern in the general community about support for the arts” and show buyers that “there is Ottawa art out there.”
Durr says she has also noticed city employees recognizing her contributions to the public art collection.
“I have occasionally received e-mails or notes from the people whose offices are where the piece is hanging,” she says. “It has led to further interest in what I do.”
The city gave Browns and his staff a budget of approximately $100,000 to buy, frame, and mount over 100 pieces of art, the Ottawa Citizen reported.
Browns told local media in an interview that the cost of each piece averaged out to about $1000, which is more than what is usually spent on art in Ottawa.
“People in Ottawa just don’t really spend as much money on the artists that are here,” Browns says, adding that buyers look elsewhere when making a purchase.
Centretown resident Adrian Göllner, whose work is also on display in the Collection’s Cabinet, says he sees a similar pattern. Because of its size, he says, Ottawa doesn’t have the critical mass of buyers to support every local artist and gallery.
“You need a certain size of city to get the coverage, galleries, buyers and education,” he says. “There just isn’t an engendered market here.”
He says that the small market is one reason Ottawa has low prices for art.
According to Durr, these low prices have come with a serious cost. She says that the city of Ottawa has not given local artists the support they deserve.
Since the city’s public art collection was founded in the 1980s, “there has been a constant dilution of the support from the City of Ottawa,” she says.
“Unfortunately, Ottawa is overlooked as a site for good art,” she says.
“Buyers don’t realize there are really grand artists in Ottawa and there always have been.”
According to Göllner, municipal arts funding has been a perennial issue, mainly because it has been “underappreciated by the higher-ups” who sit on city council.
The city’s public art collection is a fantastic way to convince those “higher-ups” otherwise, because the works are placed on municipal properties where they work, he says.
“The city collection can be for the benefit of the city and its employees,” he says. “It gives interest and visual variety for people in their offices.”
Because of the high quality and diversity of the artwork on display, the Collection’s Cabinet itself is a great step in the right direction, says Göllner.
"The exhibit was not divined as a curatorial statement,” he says. “It is just a collection of works that were purchased and – wow – it really holds together.”
Hopefully, says Durr, this exhibit will help Ottawa residents and administrators alike see that local artists need support.
“If we want to continue to work at enriching the environment in this city, everyone, from children to seniors, have to keep artists in town,” she says.
“Artists can’t stay in town if they can’t make a living.”