The grounds around the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. The foundation and the National Gallery of Canada are cancelling the selection of a shortlist.
It was a good news/bad news day at the Sobey Art Foundation. The foundation announced on Wednesday that it will disburse $625,000 to a longlist of 25 emerging Canadian artists, but it’s not proceeding further with its 2020 Sobey Art Award program. The foundation and the National Gallery of Canada, which organizes the award, are cancelling the selection of a shortlist, a fall exhibition of those artists’ work and a gala presentation to the final winner.
On the one hand, the announcement is a cheering signal of financial support for new Canadian art amid a public health crisis that is particularly difficult for self-employed artists: With the foundation putting all the prize money and associated costs in one pot, each recipient will get $25,000.
“The Sobey Art Foundation was looking not just at the current crisis, but also what the possibility of a long-term economic downturn would mean for visual artists who have a hard time making ends meet at the best of times,” said Bernard Doucet of the foundation.
On the other hand, one outstanding artist just lost out on the chance at a career-changing $100,000 award, the richest visual art prize in Canada.
And the move is also a worrying sign of how long it may take museums such as the National Gallery to restart programming and untangle exhibition schedules when the COVID-19 lockdown finally ends.
Asked if the Sobey decision meant the National Gallery did not expect to reopen by fall, director Sasha Suda replied that it simply reflected current thinking about what was needed and what was possible.
“What can we do to support artists right now?” she said. “Relative to what is happening right now, is a gala important? Probably not.”
In normal years, the winner receives $100,000, and the rest of the five shortlisted artists – one from each of five regions – get $25,000 and the National Gallery hosts a fall exhibition devoted to works by those on the shortlist. However, the logistics of those next stages were daunting. The award program usually brings together its international jury, overseen by the gallery’s contemporary curator, Josée Drouin-Brisebois, for face-to-face deliberations in Nova Scotia in mid-May, a meeting that is now impossible.
The jury unveils its shortlist in June, and organizers then have the summer to hurriedly get together an exhibition of their work that would open at the gallery in September or October, before the November gala where the prize is announced. The prize program also includes international residencies for the artists, and organizers couldn’t say if the travel would be possible in 2020-21.
Suda said some believed a September Sobey exhibition was realistic, while others questioned whether artists could or would want to travel to Ottawa to install their work and attend the opening.
The cancellation of the Sobey exhibition is just the first tough decision about 2020-21 programming the gallery faces as the dominoes fall around the international museum community. Schedules are in ruins as touring exhibitions and loans of international art get blocked at borders while the couriers who accompany them can’t travel. The gallery was going to open a major exhibition entitled Canada and Impressionism in the fall, but has given permission to the Musée Fabre in Montpelier, France, to keep that show for a delayed opening there. Most of a show devoted to the work of contemporary Canadian conceptual artist Moyra Davey that was due to open in March is in storage at the gallery. Meanwhile, Abadakone, the current survey of contemporary Indigenous art, must come down in August when many of its international loans expire – whether the gallery is open or closed.
The national gallery is heavily funded by the federal government, and has not laid off any full-time employees. However, it is negotiating layoffs with some on-call staff, whose hours usually ramp up in the summer, so that they can collect the new Canada Emergency Response Benefit.
Meanwhile, the Sobey Art Foundation says it will return to the usual format of five finalists and a single winner as soon as public health permits. This year, the foundation received 100 nominations, from which the jury selected the 25 longlisted winners. They are: from the West Coast and Yukon region, Michele Di Menna, Tsema Igharas, Carmen Papalia, Joseph Tisiga and Zadie Xa; from the Prairies and the North, asinnajaq, Jason de Haan, Luther Konadu, Amy Malbeuf and Freya Bjorg Olafson; from Ontario, Bambitchell, Sara Cwynar, Georgia Dickie, Jagdeep Raina and Catherine Telford Keogh; from Quebec, Adam Basanta, Moridja Kitenge Banza, Manuel Mathieu, Caroline Monnet and Sabrina Ratté, and from the Atlantic region, Jordan Bennett, Melanie Colosimo, Graeme Patterson, Lou Sheppard and D’Arcy Wilson.