Skip to content

Nanaimo Art Gallery looks back, looks ahead

Executive reviewed last year’s achievements and discussed future goals at annual general meeting
8625611_web1_art-gallery-AGM
Nanaimo Art Gallery board member Ian Gove, left, president Deborah Zorkin and executive director Julie Bevan call a vote during the gallery’s annual general meeting on Wednesday. Josef Jacobson/The News Bulletin

“We had another great year at the Nanaimo Art Gallery,” said Deborah Zorkin, president of the Nanaimo Art Gallery board of directors, to open the gallery’s annual general meeting in the Art Lab on Wednesday night.

The meeting was a chance for gallery staff, executive and supporters to look back on the past year and determine if strategic goals and priorities were reached.

Zorkin, reading out a list of gallery statistics for the last year, noted that the gallery was used for 320 days, welcomed more than 20,000 visitors, served 11,843 children participants in the TD Artists in the Schools program, featured six exhibitions, hosted one travelling exhibition from the Vancouver Art Gallery, hosted one artist residency, paid 86 artists, held 74 adult and youth Art Lab workshops, provided 28 teenagers with youth engagement programs, held 21 indigenous education outreach workshops and events and 39 gallery events, tours, talks and screenings. The gallery also launched its first publication, Black Diamond Dust.

In terms of funding, executive director Julie Bevan said the gallery received a 25 per cent increase in operating funds from the British Columbia Arts Council. She added the gallery was also recently award its “largest ever” Canada Council for the Arts grant and its largest single donation from the Edwina and Paul Heller Memorial Fund.

In 2016 the gallery was named the Arts Organization of the Year at the Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce Business and Community Achievement Awards. It also received a gift of 27 ceramic works by regional artists from the estate of Diane Carr, whom Zorkin described as a “curator, collector and pottery enthusiast.”

Zorkin mentioned this year saw the completion of Phase 2 of the gallery’s renovation plan. Bulkheads in the gallery have been removed, lighting has been upgraded, new storage space for collections has been created, as have a new office for curator Jesse Birch and a new kitchen and multipurpose room. Zorkin said the renovations came in “perfectly on budget.”

Bevan began her remarks by noting that she had difficulty condensing her report for the meeting “because our program has developed into something that’s so much bigger and more complex and more impactful. There are more stories to tell about our work than ever before and more voices in the mix and our team and our members and the artists we’ve worked with and our funders should all be very proud.”

She said the publication of Black Diamond Dust is helping to build international profile for the gallery and added that a second book is in the works and expected to be finished late next year or early 2019.

Bevan said teenagers have become an important audience for the gallery, a revelation that resulted in the creation of Code Switching, “an expanded platform for youth, open to aspiring teen artists, writers, curators and critics.” The art group, open to participants ages 15 to 19, runs though the academic year and is currently accepting applications.

The gallery has also taken steps to increase indigenous representation. Bevan said last year, for the first time, the gallery’s Art Lab had a presence at National Aboriginal Day celebrations, the gallery store now includes work by indigenous artists and the Artists in the Schools program included five indigenous artists, five more than it did the year before. This past year the gallery also hired an indigenous education co-ordinator.

“It’s become apparent that we are all, indigenous and non-indigenous, beneficiaries of the work of building new understandings,” she said. “We’re not only inviting indigenous community members in, we’re critically examining our embedded ways of operating and we’re making shifts to be truly inclusive, welcoming and open.”

arts@nanaimobulletin.com