The Art Museum and the Visual a Rts Archives
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Pictures and History: The Art Museum and the Visual A rts Archives by GREG SPURGEON* The pictorial arts are collected for many reasons. Among the numerous public and private institutions which collect pictorial art are the art museum or gallery which specializes in the "fine arts," and the pictorial archives which specializes in "documentary art." The Oxford English Dictionary defines each as follows: a "museum" is "a building ... used as a repository for the preservation and exhibition of objects illustrative of antiquities, natural history, fine and industrial art, or some particular branch of any of these subjects" and "art" is the "skilful production of the beautiful in visible forms," whereas an "archives" is "a place in which public records or other important documents are kept" and a "document" is "something written or otherwise inscribed which furnishes evidence or information upon any subject, such as a manuscript, title-deed, tombstone, coin, picture, etc." Clearly there is some overlap of territory for the museum and the archives in their roles as preservers of heritage, but there is also clearly some difference of focus. In the arena of pictorial art, the art museum focuses on "art" with its connotations of taste, beauty, and creative excellence, whereas the archives focuses on the "document" with its inherent evidential, informational, or historical value. But are these distinctions clear either in fact or in practice? Is any example of pictorial art ever wholly "art" or wholly a "document"? And where should it find a home - in a museum or in an archives? The answers to these questions are neither simple nor clear-cut. and so, in this paper, I propose to examine the overlapping interests of the art museum and the pictorial archives in the larger search for the historical and cultural "roots" of a people. In this search, I will use the examples of two institutions with Canadian pictorial art collections, the National Gallery of Canada and the Public Archives of Canada. Both the National Gallery and Public Archives are products of the surge of nationalistic sentiments and nation-building that followed on the heels of Confe- deration, arising from what Canadian historian, Adam Shortt, referred to in his diary as "the necessity for a thorough presentation of the facts of history which will give at once unity and inspiration to the people of Canada."' The Public Archives of Canada was created in 1872 in response to a petition supported by the Quebec Literary and Historical Society to gather, classify, and make Canadian records * This paper was originally prepared for the Archives Course. Public Archives of Canada. April 1983. and has been rev~sedfor publication. I Ian E. Wilson, "Shortt and Doughty the Cultural Role of the Public Archives of Canada" (A paper prepared for the Canadian Historical Association. 5 June 1972). p. 7. ' A11 rights reserved: An.hii~ar.iuI7 (Winter 1983-84) PICTI!RES AND HISTORY hl available to researchers. In 1874. the Secretary of State created a Keeper of the Records to preserve official government documents. Only in 1903 were the two roles of Archivist and Keeper combined as the Dominion Archivist within the Department of ~griculture,following a recommendation of a Commission on Public Records of 1898. The National Gallery of Canada came into existence a few years after the Public Archives on the occasion of the opening of an exhibition of the newly-formed Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in March 1880, when the then Governor General, the Marquis of Lorne, announced that "each academician has agreed to give a diploma picture as a condition of his appointment, to be presented to the Government, to form the nucleus of a national gallery at Ottawa, which it is hoped will soon become worthy of the D~minion."~ While the government may have provided the young Dominion with the trappings of cultural institutions, it did not provide the encouragement, the direction, or the financial resources to bring these noble intentions to fruition. There were other and more pressing priorities in the young nation. The early history of the Public Archives under Brymner was, according to Ian Wilson, "characterized by a succession of false starts and gropings, by plans never fully carried out, and, generally, by lack of government intere~t."~Similarly, Jean Sutherland Boggs said of the National Gallery that "The Lornes' enthusiasm fell on decidedly barren gr~und."~The Public Archives of Canada really only began to come into its own with the succession ofArthur Doughty to the role of Dominion Archivist after 1903. The National Gallery, until then little more than a room of indifferent diploma pictures donated by Academicians housed above a more popular Government fisheries exhibit, began to awaken from it. dormant state with the creation in 1907, at the instigation of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, of an advisory committee of laymen known as the Advisory Arts Council. Eric Brown, hired as curator in 1910, subsequently became the Gallery's first director in 19 13. The driving force behind the National Gallery in these first years, Sir Edmund Walker, a Toronto banker who was chairman of the Advisory Arts Council, was also a member of the Historical Manuscripts Commission associated with the Public Archives, which had been created in 1907, the same year as the Advisory Arts Council. This almost parallel historical development of the two institutions culminated in the long-awaited arrival of their legislated mandates. The Public Archives Act of 1912 (an unamended act under which the PAC still operates) made the Archives a separate department reporting to the Secretary of State and, in essence, a national department of history "consisting of all such public records, documents and other historical material of every kind, nature and description as, under the provision of this Act, or under the authority of any order in council made by virtue thereof, are placed under the care, custody and control of the Dominion Archi~ist."~The National Gallery Act of 1913 severed the Gallery from a vague and problematic association with the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and defined its objectives as "the encouragement and cultivation of correct artistic taste and Canadian interest in the fine arts, the promotion of the interests generally of art in Canada; the exhibition 2 Jean Suthcrland Boggs, The ,A1a'arionalGaller~. of Canada (Toronto. 1971). p. 1. 3 Wilson, "Shortt and Doughty," p. 8. 4 Boggs. The .Va'arronal Galler~,of Canada. p. 2. 5 Public Archives of Canada Act, 1912. of works of art under the auspices of the Board or of art societies or otherwise; the custody and preservation of the works of art contributed ... by the members of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts ... the acquiring by purchase. lease. devise or otherwise of pictures. statuary, works of art and other similar pr~perty."~In essence, the National Gallery was to be a national department of fine arts. Equipped with these new legislated mandates, with regular annual appropriations from the government (though the exigencies of World War I were soon to rob both institutions of almost all financial support), and with new physical quarters (the Archives after 1906 in the new Archives Building on Sussex Drive, now the Canadian War Museum; the Gallery after 1912 in the new Victoria Memorial Museum), both institutions found themselves with more solid foundations on which to build. The early acquisitions policy of the National Gallery was directed exclusively toward the pictorial arts whereas that of the Public Archives was predominantly in the realm of textual records. Early in this century, however, the scope of the collections of the Public Archives broadened to include pictorial records: When Dr. Arthur Doughty was appointed Dominion Archivist in 1903, the Public Archives Collections of books, manuscripts and maps were housed in one room, while the pictorial material did not fill more than one portfolio. In planning for future development, Dr. Doughty recognized the necessity of increasing the latter collection, and, without any encouragement from his Departmental superiors made an immediate start in this direction, one of his first efforts being to acquire several large original drawings of Montreal and other well-known places by George Heriot, at a total cost of less than three hundred dollars (today they would be worth at least ten times as much). He reported the find to his Minister, who had no sympathy with such'fads,' refused to examine the drawings or to approve of their purchase. Fortunately, a colleague of this Minister, of different tastes, purchased the drawings and hung them on the walls of his office. Shortly afterwards, the other Minister happened to visit his colleague, saw the pictures (without knowing that they were the very ones he had refused to buy), praised them, and declared that they should belong to Canada.' By 1906 the Minister in charge of the Archives Branch had given official authorization to expend money for the purchase of paintings, drawings, and prints reflecting Canadian life, and as early as 1907 three divisions of the Archives were recognized, one for manuscripts, one for maps, and one for prints. The aim of the department was to meet the legitimate needs of all hona jide investigators of Canadian history, and so the collection of pictorial art was built on broad lines, including portraits of historical and government personalities, of historical events including modern interpretations of early history by contemporary Canadian artists such as Jefferys and Reid (whom Doughty actively encouraged to depict such themes), pictures relating to aboriginal populations, and views of places. The 1925 Catalogue of Pictures including Paintings, Drau'ings and Prints in the Public 6 National Gallery of Canada Act.