By Janna Graham
Virtual reality is the closest Ottawa is coming to the National Portrait Gallery.
The official website is the only space where the nation’s portraits will be publicly exhibited, at least for the time being.
The portrait gallery seems poised to move west to Calgary, but many feel too great of an investment has been made in Ottawa.
Moving the portrait gallery to Calgary means abandoning millions of dollars already spent on design and development, as well as sacrificing the vision of a public archive in a renovated heritage building.
When the Conservatives came into power last year, progress on the Wellington street site suddenly stopped.
Last July, an internal memo sent by the Prime Minister’s Office stated that, “the portrait gallery is under review, and as such Public Works and Government Services Canada will not award any further contracts.”
For the past six months, Ottawa Centre MP Paul Dewar has hounded the Conservative government about the future of the National Portrait Gallery.
He had made an Access-To-Information request for documents relating to the portrait gallery and found that much of the information had been blacked out.
“To this day, they have not come clean with what they are going to do with the Portrait Gallery,” says Dewar. “They spent $11 million on this already. It begs the question, why abandon this investment?”
According to Hansard records for April 24, 2006, the Wellington Street location had been originally chosen as, “the best option because it will allow long term public use and will strengthen the visibility of federal cultural agencies along Confederation Boulevard.”
A national public gallery could blend into energy giant Encana’s vision to, “integrate public amenities and services” in their Calgary office development, the Bow skyscraper.
Encana media relations officer, Almas Kassam, would not confirm the relocation of the portrait gallery to Calgary.
However, she did say her company is currently in negotiations with the federal government to partner on a, “cultural project or museum.”
In 2000, then Heritage Minister Sheila Copps announced the creation of a National Portrait Gallery that would bring together everything from hand-painted portraits of first nations chiefs to grainy photographs of Canadian pop stars.
These portraits were to adorn the walls of the former American embassy on Wellington Street, directly across from Parliament Hill.
The portrait gallery would be similar in scope to England’s National Portrait in London or the American National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
In 2003, architects began to develop designs for renovating the 1930s heritage building into a public space.
The tendered competition was awarded to an international architecture team including Cole and Associates of Ottawa, Teeple Architects of Toronto and Edward Jones / Jeremy Dixon of London, England.
“The vision was to reciprocate a very fine neo-classical building with a modern building; temporary exhibits and permanent exhibits,” said Edward Jones from his office in London, England.
“To use it for other purposes is a great misuse of the building which has great status as a public building.”
By 2005, Jones had been flown across the Atlantic a dozen times to meet with his team as well as the National Capital Commission and Heritage Canada.
The working drawings were completed; the inside of the building had been gutted and was ready for next construction phase.
Jones said the project – insofar as the design development and construction was concerned – was completely on budget.
Edward Jones and his architecture team were paid about $2.3 million to design and plan the Wellington Street renovation. The Conservatives are said to have other plans for the building. Jones speculated that the building is to be renovated for 40 office spaces.
Edward Jones likened the deliberation to, “political football, where national projects get kicked about.”
In Calgary, Encana spokeswoman refuted the idea that the National Portrait Gallery should stay in the capital city.
“Right now, the National Portrait Gallery is in a warehouse in Quebec, the gallery doesn’t exist anywhere but a warehouse,” says Kassam,
“Housing the National Portrait Gallery would be a gift to Calgary and to Alberta that would make the Encana project a destination.”
An announcement from Heritage Canada regarding the future of the National Portrait Gallery is expected soon.