School art sale no cure
The Toronto District School Board has a fine collection worth $7 million, so use it don’t hide it
By MOIRA MACDONALD
20th May 2009
The only shame in the debate over the Toronto District School Board’s art collection is that it is still languishing in a secret vault.
Let’s get that art out, let’s get it up and let the TDSB start making money off of it.
I broke the story in the fall of 2007 that the board had been quietly fanning staff out to retrieve some 7,000 art works from its schools.
The works were put into a vault for safe-keeping and restoration until the board could figure out the best way to use them. Using the works for the benefit of students’ education — a good artwork holds lessons that go on for a lifetime — and securing their longevity were priorities.
So tonight, when a motion by trustee and artist Gary Crawford to hire a curator for the collection goes to the board’s finance committee, let’s get off this Philistine argument of selling the art to the highest bidder to pay for things like pools and support staff.
A liquidation sale would be like hawking your great-grandmother’s wedding ring just to keep the lights on a few more months — when what you really should do is get your household budget and spending in better order.
We are talking about a collection of paintings and sculptures amassed over the decades through private gifts and small purchases by the TDSB’s six former “legacy” boards. Once the collection was gathered in 2007 it was appraised at $7 million — the bulk concentrated in about 20 “top-tier” art works, including Tom Thomson’s Autumn Scene, which Riverdale Collegiate would understandably love to have back.
The value — both financial and cultural — of these works is a key reason Crawford and others were getting nervous about continuing to allow them to hang all over town without any concerted plan for protecting them.
A pair of Japanese prints worth at least $20,000 were on the verge of being thrown out before they were picked up in the TDSB’s great art haul. A Fred Varley — one of the Group of Seven — was found leaning against a principal’s desk on the floor.
All systems are go to establish a reference group of people from Toronto’s art world, business and the board to come up with a go-forward plan including ideas on protecting the collection and marketing it, while giving students access to it and tying the art to their curriculum.
Crawford hopes a board committee tonight will agree the board should earmark $65,000 to hire a curator for a year. That person could provide credibility to the art community that the board is serious about managing the collection professionally, while also taking care of the administrative necessities to getting the collection out of the vault and available for teaching purposes.
A curator “would allow us to get the works out of the vault much quicker,” than trying to do things in-house, Crawford told me yesterday. He also believes the position could pay for itself. The curator could help the board apply for government art grant funding and better position it to leverage the collection to pay for its upkeep through print productions and partnerships with other cultural agencies.
LOST FOREVER
History shows our legacy to future generations is often in the stuff that enriches life rather than what’s necessary for merely plodding along its path. Yes, we need decent buildings for students to learn in — and too many don’t have them. But that’s not because the school board is clinging to an art collection that would pay to keep pools open only for another year or two — while the art would be lost forever, probably to private collectors, now hovering in the wings to scoop them up.
When we say get creative about money, that doesn’t mean hawking a cultural legacy for short-term solutions. Let’s find a solution that lasts even a fraction as long as the Mona Lisa’s smile.
http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/moira_macdonald/2009/05/20/9508811-sun.html