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Soviets on Lake Simcoe
The MacLaren Art Centre has stepped out from its Rodin scandal with a vast, valuable archive of USSR-era photos, VAL ROSS writes
VAL ROSS
BARRIE, ONT. -- What would Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Joseph Stalin make of the capitalist forces gathered around their images?
In a quiet, panelled room in the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ont., the Soviet leaders stare up from old black-and-white photos, sheathed in plastic and stored in 233 leatherette ring binders. The binders also contain Cossacks riding full-tilt across the plains; Russian violinist David Oistrakh playing a concert for the gaunt people of Leningrad in 1943, to give them heart while German bombs pound their besieged city; Nazi atrocities; children labouring in munitions factories; Lenin's wife Krupskaya, full-lipped and young, in a photo dated 1892; and a hearty man identified as "S. Kukovsky, best combine operator of the Smidovich collective farm, 1938."
This is the Sovfoto agency archive, a collection of 23,116 black-and-white Soviet Union press pictures. Back in 1998, the gallery started discussing acquiring Sovfoto and another major photo archive, the Black Star agency (photos of such 20th-century icons as John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, space walks and race riots) from an anonymous donor, said to be Vancouver multimillionaire and magazine distributor Jim Pattison. In 2001, Canada's Cultural Property Export Review board was asked to judge the valuation of the Sovfoto collection. Its ruling, $15,391,589, entitled the donor to related tax credits.
This strategy, crucial to the gallery's wildly ambitious strategy to acquire world-class (read, tourist-drawing) works of art, was pitching the MacLaren into that old melodrama about exploitable small-town dreamers. Under its then-executive director William Moore, Barrie panted after a vision of itself as "ArtCity." As local cheerleaders in the city an hour north of Toronto put it, "Art will do for Barrie what theatre has done for Stratford."
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In 2004, the Cultural Property Export Review board was asked to rule on the Sovfoto donor's proposal to give the MacLaren his Black Star archive, at a valuation of $100-million. But by now, the bottom was falling out of the MacLaren's credibility, thanks to concerns about yet another, now notorious, gift from a consortium of donors -- bronzes and plasters attributed to the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Officials at the Canada Revenue Agency told The Globe and Mail's James Adams that with the Rodin gift, the gallery was "likely the victim" of a complicated tax-avoidance scheme.
"I want to do a book on that whole situation," says MacLaren's current acting director John Lister. "The title: What Were We Thinking?"
Early in 2004, the gallery's controversial director, Moore, one of the Rodin deal's architects, resigned. Still, the MacLaren tried to hang on to the Black Star gift. But federal officials refused to rule on Black Star until the gallery resolved its Rodin problems (in fact, the sculptures' ownership is still being contested, as is their authenticity). The growing stink gave the photo archives' donor cold feet. "The Black Star was coming here at a time when the MacLaren was unstable. A lot of people distanced themselves . . . so the donor felt it prudent to send part of his gift elsewhere," says Lister. The MacLaren put Mr. X in touch with Toronto's Ryerson University, where he took his Black Star collection later in 2004.
When Lister took over the MacLaren in November, 2005, instead of becoming ArtCity's crown jewel, it faced bankruptcy. "You could run around here with no clothes on and no one would see you," says Lister. Adds curator Sandra Fraser, "We called it the Morgue, people were so depressed." The moral of the melodrama seemed to be: If you're a small Canadian town, do not dream about playing in the big-time art world.
But by late this summer, six months after Barrie City Council bailed out the gallery by agreeing to take on the $200,000 costs of security staff, janitors and heating, the MacLaren was jostling and noisy. There were art classes and art-therapy programs, and much evidence of renewed community orientation. A children's play, Snow White, was bringing thumping groups of kids into a space on the second floor; nearby, two large galleries were hung with contemporary Canadian art -- the MacLaren's new focus -- including some large, colourful canvases by John Lennard inspired by his trip to Leningrad/St. Petersburg. Hanging just a few metres from the Sovfoto archive, Lennard's Russian paintings hinted at ways in which the gallery's Soviet hoard might inspire exciting curatorial combinations.
The MacLaren is replacing its wild, freewheeling image with that of a community-grounded gallery with valuable assets. Last year, it exhibited a sampling of its Sovfoto treasures; it plans a more ambitious show next year. Fraser has asked Canadian artists such as Olexander Wlasenko and Sadko Hadzihasanovic to create works inspired by the Sovfoto photos and plans to ask Barrie's Eastern European communities to respond to the material with their own stories.
The archive also offers rich possibilities to explore propaganda. Consider the images of Aleksei Stakhanov, Hero of Socialist Labour. On Aug. 31, 1935, in the Donbas coal region, this man allegedly mined a record 102 tons of coal in less than six hours (14 times his quota). Most Cold War historians pooh-pooh the feat. Sure enough, the Sovfoto archives reveal something very stagy about photos such as, "Stakhanov's speech at the conference was an appeal to the miners, urging them to give more coal to the Country of Soviets and to fulfill the Donbas Plan. 1938."
If Sovfoto is a big asset for the MacLaren, it's even more so for the region, which is becoming a world centre for the study of photojournalism. Within an hour's drive are not only the Black Star and Sovfoto archives, but also the Klinsky collection (from an Amsterdam agency that flourished before the Nazis) and the IND collection of Cold War French photojournalism (including works by Henri Cartier-Bresson) at Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario.
So perhaps the MacLaren melodrama has a different moral, one of which Comrade Stakhanov, if he ever existed, might approve: Beware unbridled capitalism, but don't be afraid of big dreams.
© Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The MacLaren Art Centre has stepped out from its Rodin scandal with a vast, valuable archive of USSR-era photos, VAL ROSS writes
VAL ROSS
BARRIE, ONT. -- What would Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Joseph Stalin make of the capitalist forces gathered around their images?
In a quiet, panelled room in the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ont., the Soviet leaders stare up from old black-and-white photos, sheathed in plastic and stored in 233 leatherette ring binders. The binders also contain Cossacks riding full-tilt across the plains; Russian violinist David Oistrakh playing a concert for the gaunt people of Leningrad in 1943, to give them heart while German bombs pound their besieged city; Nazi atrocities; children labouring in munitions factories; Lenin's wife Krupskaya, full-lipped and young, in a photo dated 1892; and a hearty man identified as "S. Kukovsky, best combine operator of the Smidovich collective farm, 1938."
This is the Sovfoto agency archive, a collection of 23,116 black-and-white Soviet Union press pictures. Back in 1998, the gallery started discussing acquiring Sovfoto and another major photo archive, the Black Star agency (photos of such 20th-century icons as John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, space walks and race riots) from an anonymous donor, said to be Vancouver multimillionaire and magazine distributor Jim Pattison. In 2001, Canada's Cultural Property Export Review board was asked to judge the valuation of the Sovfoto collection. Its ruling, $15,391,589, entitled the donor to related tax credits.
This strategy, crucial to the gallery's wildly ambitious strategy to acquire world-class (read, tourist-drawing) works of art, was pitching the MacLaren into that old melodrama about exploitable small-town dreamers. Under its then-executive director William Moore, Barrie panted after a vision of itself as "ArtCity." As local cheerleaders in the city an hour north of Toronto put it, "Art will do for Barrie what theatre has done for Stratford."
Print Edition - Section Front
Enlarge Image
More National Stories
Chinese puzzled by aloofness from Ottawa
Ignatieff acts to dispel idea Rae gaining
With 36-3 vote, it was hockey day in Toronto
Ottawa handed out $20-million to Island airline boss
Zaccardelli plays down inquiry's criticisms
U.S. clears Canadian for takeoff
Go to the National section
In 2004, the Cultural Property Export Review board was asked to rule on the Sovfoto donor's proposal to give the MacLaren his Black Star archive, at a valuation of $100-million. But by now, the bottom was falling out of the MacLaren's credibility, thanks to concerns about yet another, now notorious, gift from a consortium of donors -- bronzes and plasters attributed to the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Officials at the Canada Revenue Agency told The Globe and Mail's James Adams that with the Rodin gift, the gallery was "likely the victim" of a complicated tax-avoidance scheme.
"I want to do a book on that whole situation," says MacLaren's current acting director John Lister. "The title: What Were We Thinking?"
Early in 2004, the gallery's controversial director, Moore, one of the Rodin deal's architects, resigned. Still, the MacLaren tried to hang on to the Black Star gift. But federal officials refused to rule on Black Star until the gallery resolved its Rodin problems (in fact, the sculptures' ownership is still being contested, as is their authenticity). The growing stink gave the photo archives' donor cold feet. "The Black Star was coming here at a time when the MacLaren was unstable. A lot of people distanced themselves . . . so the donor felt it prudent to send part of his gift elsewhere," says Lister. The MacLaren put Mr. X in touch with Toronto's Ryerson University, where he took his Black Star collection later in 2004.
When Lister took over the MacLaren in November, 2005, instead of becoming ArtCity's crown jewel, it faced bankruptcy. "You could run around here with no clothes on and no one would see you," says Lister. Adds curator Sandra Fraser, "We called it the Morgue, people were so depressed." The moral of the melodrama seemed to be: If you're a small Canadian town, do not dream about playing in the big-time art world.
But by late this summer, six months after Barrie City Council bailed out the gallery by agreeing to take on the $200,000 costs of security staff, janitors and heating, the MacLaren was jostling and noisy. There were art classes and art-therapy programs, and much evidence of renewed community orientation. A children's play, Snow White, was bringing thumping groups of kids into a space on the second floor; nearby, two large galleries were hung with contemporary Canadian art -- the MacLaren's new focus -- including some large, colourful canvases by John Lennard inspired by his trip to Leningrad/St. Petersburg. Hanging just a few metres from the Sovfoto archive, Lennard's Russian paintings hinted at ways in which the gallery's Soviet hoard might inspire exciting curatorial combinations.
The MacLaren is replacing its wild, freewheeling image with that of a community-grounded gallery with valuable assets. Last year, it exhibited a sampling of its Sovfoto treasures; it plans a more ambitious show next year. Fraser has asked Canadian artists such as Olexander Wlasenko and Sadko Hadzihasanovic to create works inspired by the Sovfoto photos and plans to ask Barrie's Eastern European communities to respond to the material with their own stories.
The archive also offers rich possibilities to explore propaganda. Consider the images of Aleksei Stakhanov, Hero of Socialist Labour. On Aug. 31, 1935, in the Donbas coal region, this man allegedly mined a record 102 tons of coal in less than six hours (14 times his quota). Most Cold War historians pooh-pooh the feat. Sure enough, the Sovfoto archives reveal something very stagy about photos such as, "Stakhanov's speech at the conference was an appeal to the miners, urging them to give more coal to the Country of Soviets and to fulfill the Donbas Plan. 1938."
If Sovfoto is a big asset for the MacLaren, it's even more so for the region, which is becoming a world centre for the study of photojournalism. Within an hour's drive are not only the Black Star and Sovfoto archives, but also the Klinsky collection (from an Amsterdam agency that flourished before the Nazis) and the IND collection of Cold War French photojournalism (including works by Henri Cartier-Bresson) at Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario.
So perhaps the MacLaren melodrama has a different moral, one of which Comrade Stakhanov, if he ever existed, might approve: Beware unbridled capitalism, but don't be afraid of big dreams.
© Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.