If I had my druthers, all museums would be within easy walking distance of my home and all would have illuminating and provocative exhibitions running 24/7. But I know that having a museum next door is neither practical nor advisable, given the traffic and parking problems that already infuriate me about my patch of midtown Toronto. Remember the long-standing feud between the residents of Merion, Pennsylvania and the Barnes Foundation because of all the visitors who blocked driveways and otherwise caused havoc in their frenzy to see the Modiglianis and Cezannes that the prescient Mr. Barnes had bought in Paris in the 1920s and hung artfully on the walls of his house?
Location matters when it comes to museums, and patrons, bureaucrats and planners need to think, about the uses and needs of collections now and in the future before simply plunking them down in a politically or financially expedient spot. And that is the crux of the controversy about allowing the National Portrait Gallery to be a grace and favour tenant in a commercially funded building in Calgary.
The word national is the first clue that something is amiss if the proposed gallery is shifted from Ottawa, Canada’s national capital, to a provincial city, no matter how prosperous. This is not a private collection amassed by an individual. The works in question are historically significant artefacts about the founding and development of our nation. I’m all for regional development, but no other country — think of England, Australia, the United States — has established its national, and I repeat the word national, portrait gallery outside its capital city. There are also pragmatic reasons for turning down the rumoured generosity of EnCana Corp and its said to be forthcoming offer of 100,000 sq.ft. of space and $30 million in funding.
A lot of public money, time, and effort has already been spent on converting the former American embassy, a beaux arts building on Wellington Street, a prime tourist location directly across from the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. Should that investment be squandered so that Stephen Harper and his government can save the cost of finishing the admittedly expensive job of creating a National Portrait Gallery worthy of the name, and our precious heritage, in the nation’s capital?
No museum worthy of the name can have all of its treasures on display all of the time. If you want to assess the depth and breadth of a great collection, you have to visit its vaults. The 20,000 works of art, four million photographs and about 10,000 philatelic items in this national collection are stored in a repository of the National Archives of Canada, a purpose built, temperature and humidity controlled $60 million facility in the Gatineau, just outside Ottawa. That’s a long way from Calgary. Shipping fragile works back and forth from Ontario to Alberta will be a hazardous and expensive proposition.
So I have a suggestion. Accept the kind offer of EnCana corporation and establish a regional gallery for travelling exhibitions from all of the national museums in Canada and solicit funding from other private corporations to help create the National Portrait Gallery in Ottawa where it belongs.
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