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The AMS Permanent* Art Collection

Posted By Neal Yonson On January 20, 2012 @ 9:10 pm In Elections,Featured | Comments Disabled

*Next week, students will be asked to vote in a referendum to authorize the AMS to sell three works of art from its permanent collection [1]. Didn’t know the AMS even had an art collection? We found an expert willing to explain it all, Kate Barbaria, last year’s AMS Art Gallery Commissioner.

So, here’s the deal: The AMS owns an astonishingly great collection of Canadian art, for a group of self-centred hacks who don’t give a shit about art and haven’t for the last 50 years, (as far as I can tell based on my research in the AMS archives).

About collections, in general

Most art institutions (galleries, museums, artist-run centres, etc.) have permanent collections that trace both the history of their particular institution, as well as the history of whatever art is being produced around them at the time. These permanent collections are amassed through donation and purchase. They can include anything from paintings, to sculptures, to videos, to written instructions for a curator. Sometimes (oftentimes, actually), the collection is a smattering of good and bad, quality and not-so-quality, important and crap. This, however, is not a “bad” thing. Curators should be reluctant to let go of anything in their collection, despite its perceived value. It should be difficult for the institution to deaccession (sell) works from a permanent collection because it is impossible to tell, in the present moment, the “cultural” value of the collection in part or whole. That is to say, a collection is not only its parts, but a sum of its parts–a record of what people were thinking, what they were buying, and what they were making. Just because something looks like shit doesn’t mean it should be got rid of, and just because something can be sold for a lot of money doesn’t mean that is its true value.

That being said, if an art institution is struggling, the collection is an asset, and if the primary goal of the institution is to support current artists by paying them for their work or funding grants, then they should probably mine the hell out of any assets they have to make that happen. The artists in the collection, after all, have already been paid.

About your permanent collection

The AMS Permanent Collection began in the early 50s when a group of professors decided that UBC students deserved an art collection as good as its university. Collecting was overseen by B.C. Binning, a prominent British Columbia artist, and the head of the Fine Arts Department at UBC, but chosen by students. This means that the early collection, which was hung in Brock Hall for many years, was developed by someone with CREDENTIALS. I mean this guy Binning really knew his shit. He would take students to visit local artist studios, would help the students liaise with them, would bargain down prices on pieces for the collection, and essentially got us a whole bunch of radical, really quality work in line with the narrative of Canadian painting that was being structured at the time.

When Binning retired in 1974, the torch was not passed on to another professor, but straight to the AMS. Awesome, right? Pretty much. But this is where that part about the possibilities of a good/bad collection come in. The AMS Permanent Collection, at this point, takes on some interesting characteristics. Students are teaching themselves how to collect, how to liaise, how to bargain with artists, which means that from 1974 to the present, the collection has some serious hight points, and some serious low points. But, like I said, the collection as a whole tells us a fascinating story not only about student interests in these years, and the struggles that they might have had finding artists who would work with them, but also about the state of Canadian art from the mid-70s to the present, about its ups and downs, its struggle to place itself in a discussion of contemporary art in North America.

What’s in it, more specifically

Currently, the AMS Permanent Collection has around 60 pieces. There is one piece of video art (by Marina Roy, a professor at UBC), one installation (by Abbas Akhavan, which goes with Roy’s piece), two photographs (one by Roy Arden, and one by Adam Harrison), a handful of sculptural works (including a giant ceramic watermelon by Gathie Falk, and a plexiglass cutout by Michael Morris, who has a show on at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery right this very moment), one work by a First Nations artists (Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun), one giant inflatable landscape by the N.E. Thing Company (please please don’t sell this one, AMS!!!! It’s my favourite), and a whole buncha paintings, drawings, and collages. Some of these paintings are by the Group of Seven, and some of these pieces are by their contemporaries.

The AMS Art Gallery has been collecting roughly one piece of art a year for the past 25 years, and for the 25 years before that, the collection was growing by several works per year. Last year, as the AMS Art Gallery Commissioner, I had to agree not to include money traditionally earmarked for collecting in the budget, for the second year in a row, in order to ensure that the AMS Artist in Residence program would continue. The AMS Artist in Residence program (begun by Art Gallery Commissioner Jeremy Jaud), is currently the only monetary award given out by the AMS Art Gallery, and it finances an art show for one artist or curator at the end of the school year.

The Commissioner is charged with showing the permanent collection two time per year. Last year it was shown three times (Neighbours; I’m A Debaser; Claude Breeze and Friends). The year before that, I’m not sure. Pieces from the collection have been showcased in exhibits at the Vancouver Art Gallery several times since collecting began.

It is clear that the Permanent Collection is not used to the advantage that its founders hoped it would be. It’s hardly ever seen, and its current storage conditions mean that it is deteriorating in an…unpleasant…manner. The AMS has poured a substantial amount of money into stabilizing the condition of the collection in the past two years, but it needs to spend even more if the collection is going to survive the next quarter century. That is being partially addressed by the new storage being designed for it in the new SUB, but many pieces need restoration before they can be shown at all.

IMHO

Money for student artists? Great! Fix the collection? The current referendum doesn’t do that, nor does it solve, in my opinion, the financial struggles the AMS finds itself in. Selling pieces of the collection to fix the collection is a good idea. Selling pieces of the collection to pay for…something…is a weak promise at best.

Kate Barbaria was the AMS Art Gallery Commissioner 2010-11. She graduated from UBC in 2011 with a BA in Art History, with a minor in Medieval Studies. Kate co-curated “Faces” at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and “Post No Bills: A Punk Rock Family Tree” at the Museum of Vancouver. Can do 9 pushups.


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[1] authorize the AMS to sell three works of art from its permanent collection: http://amsvotes.ca/pages/q4.html

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