Читать книгу Museum Practice - Группа авторов - Страница 56

MOCCA was constituted in 1999 from the former Art Gallery of North York, which was founded five years earlier. In its original incarnation, the Art Gallery of North York was a 5000 sq. foot (465 m²) gallery in the back of the North York Performing Arts Centre (NYPAC), a state-of-the-art theater complex built in 1993 by what was then called the City of North York, which is now a suburb of Toronto.

The driving principle behind the Centre was that it would be an incubator for the arts without requiring additional tax dollars. This was accomplished through a 10-year deal between the City of North York and Live Entertainment Corp. (Livent), according to which Livent paid the City an annual fee from the profits it made by operating NYPAC as a commercial venture. Through this deal, Livent paid the staff salaries and other operating costs at the Centre. It also allocated a portion of the surcharge on ticket sales toward building a contemporary Canadian art collection for the City of North York. While Livent operated the Centre, NYPAC was nevertheless governed by the North York Performing Arts Centre Corporation, a city-appointed body responsible for running the Centre. The Gallery and its advisors reported directly to this NYPAC Corporation board.

The Art Gallery of North York was an exciting, novel, and important venue for living Canadian artists. When it opened on June 21, 1994 with an ambitious exhibition entitled Future Traditions in Canadian Art: Seven Artists Selected by Seven Curators, it became the only institution in Toronto dedicated exclusively to showcasing the work of living Canadian artists. For the next four years the Gallery built its collection, which in 1999 was reported to be worth CDN$3 million and welcomed 70,000 visitors at its peak – many of whom were also theater patrons at Livent productions.

This was an unprecedented and unique deal for a public art gallery. Livent’s agreement to build a public art collection for North York had made them an attractive tenant for the venue. However, collecting, displaying, and preserving works of visual art were neither the core business nor a priority of NYPAC. Therefore, the Gallery’s operations were of minimal consequence to the overall governance of the Centre, so the curator was endowed with virtual freedom to collect and exhibit at his discretion. The audience was largely captive, since it consisted almost entirely of theater patrons awaiting performances or between acts. Therefore, an educational, public-oriented mandate was not the primary driver for attendance or for keeping the Gallery afloat.

Unfortunately, the deal proved to be too good to be true, and in 1998 Livent went bankrupt. Simultaneously, North York and other municipalities amalgamated to join what became “the mega city” of Toronto. The greatly enlarged City of Toronto was left with a multimillion dollar complex to operate and, without funding, the Gallery was left on life support.