Annual Report 2015 1 2 Bryce Kraeker 1 PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2015 / President \ A few words come to mind when I think about the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery Leadership: Our vision is to be Collaboration: As a key partner in the Commitment: Of course the Gallery can recognized as a vital cultural presence development and enhancement of the do nothing without the support of our in the community. We understand the Civic District, some foundational steps many members, donors and sponsors, importance of the arts as an economic were taken in 2015 and we look forward as well as our government funders — the driver that attracts and retains creative to continuing our collaboration with the City of Kitchener, the City of Waterloo, workers. As the oldest and largest City of Kitchener, Centre In The Square, Canada Council for the Arts and the public art museum in the region, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Ontario Arts Council. A heartfelt thank the Gallery plays a leadership role in the Kitchener Public Library and many you for your commitment to the arts in fostering a vibrant cultural landscape others in making our shared setting a our region. in the Waterloo region. Through the captivating cultural destination. Permanent Collection of over 4,000 While 2015 was a most impressive year works of art that has been recognized Passion: To a person, every one of for the Gallery, I am even more excited as a “significant national resource,” we the Gallery’s professional staff and for our future. With our leadership, enhance access to, and enjoyment of, volunteers exhibits an infectious passion momentum, collaboration, passion the visual arts and enrich the quality for the work of the Gallery. They love and commitment — it only gets better! of life for all residents right here where what they do and we thank them for they work, live and play. their exceptional contributions. In 2015, we also welcomed Alexandra Hardy as a Momentum: The Gallery hit the new member to the Board of Directors, ground running this year with a newly a group of art-loving community minted Strategic Plan that focuses on members who all deserve recognition a number of key priorities including, and thanks for their time and their among others: Artistic Excellence; wisdom and guidance in furthering the Community Engagement; and Financial mission of the Gallery. Sustainability. On every front, the Gallery continues to outperform. Management and staff delivered an outstanding year of exhibitions and public programs which received well-deserved accolades, and engaged and inspired new audiences. Administratively, we achieved our third surplus in as many years. Cover (front & back): Eleanor Bond, South Side, The Frontier of the New Europe and the Sunny South (detail), 1995, oil on unstretched canvas. Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery Collection. Donated by the artist, 2014. © Eleanor Bond. Photo: Robert McNair. Left: Installation view of Brendan Fernandes’ The Foot Made, 2015. © 2015 Brendan Fernandes. Photo: Robert McNair. Shirley Madill 3 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S REPORT 2015 / Executive Director in that we exceeded expectations in we welcomed new sponsors including \ outreach initiatives within our broad Sorbara Law, Momentum Developments and diverse community. This was only and Equitable Life; and renewed possible through our partnerships: we partnerships with Christie Digital, partnered with the Coalition of Muslim SunLife Financial, TD Bank, RBC and Women on a pilot project for artists RBC Wealth Management, Manulife, At the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, and cultural workers in the Muslim Scotiabank, and Musagetes Fund at we live our mission to connect people community; we continued to partner the Kitchener-Waterloo Community and ideas through art with a focus on with Schlegel Villages, Winston Park on Foundation. the best of contemporary culture, and a Seniors in the Studio program; and take pride in creating opportunities we maintained our partnership with We are pleased to report that we for people to be inspired and engaged the Department of Family Medicine, balanced the budget at the end of 2015 in the art experience. As a team, we McMaster University, Hamilton with with a surplus put toward decreasing believe that art can make a difference The Art of Seeing, a professional our accumulated deficit. in people’s lives. This Annual Report development program for resident captures the many ways we achieved doctors in Kitchener-Waterloo. our goals in 2015, and it is with pleasure that I note a few of the highlights of this KWAG invited Museum Hack from New past year. York for a presentation to a sold-out crowd of cultural workers from the We opened 2015 with an exhibition Waterloo Region and the GTA. Other of sculptures by Toronto-based speakers included Marc Mayer, Director artist, An Te Liu (In Absentia) and a of the National Gallery of Canada and video installation by Shirin Neshat Robin Anthony, Curator, Royal Bank of (Soliloquy). In the spring and summer, Canada collection, Toronto. we showcased new work by two young Canadian artists, Brendan We launched a new program titled Fernandes and Sarah Cale. The Gallery’s Feast for the Senses, in which local chefs Community Curator projects continued were introduced to the winter and fall with In the Guise of Geometry, curated exhibitions, then challenged to produce by Jennifer Bullock, KWAG’s Assistant a menu, including wine pairings, inspired Curator & Registrar and Linda Perez, by four or five works of art of their KWAG’s Curatorial Assistant; and choosing. School programs, Family Encounters with Music guest curated by Sundays, and DIY Workshops – not Emily Berg, a singer who resides in the to mention March Break, PD Day and Waterloo region. Of particular note was Summer Camps – continue to be a core an exceptional exhibition that premiered component of what we do. in the fall titled Imitation of Life, curated by Crystal Mowry, and featuring work by In the same way that we are committed Canadian and international artists. to enriching the art experience Aligned with our Strategic Plan’s first through exhibitions and programming priority centering on Community activities, we also work diligently Engagement, KWAG’s public programs toward the goal of increasing our level were highly successful this past year of self-generated revenues. In 2015, Kota Ezawa, Lennon Sontag Beuys, 2004, three-channel video projection with sound, 2:10 minutes, loop. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt. © 2004 Kota Ezawa. Photo: Robert McNair. Crystal Mowry 5 CURATORIAL REPORT 2015 / Senior Curator visitors. Massive in scale and cinematic \ in scope, Bond’s work introduced modernity – with its political tensions, Modernity is the transient, Our 2015 exhibitions sought to highlight its climate change, its speculation, and the fleeting, the contingent; the effects of modernity on our bodies, its gentrification – into a canon that it is one half of art, the our identities and our understanding of has been largely shaped through the other being the eternal how things exist in the world. In Shirin influence of the Group of Seven. A very and the immovable. Neshat’s mesmerizing video installation different viewing experience could be Charles Baudelaire, Soliloquy, an experience of exile is had concurrently in Under Glass. In The Painter of Modern Life (1859) manifest through a series of dualities. this exhibition, visitors encountered We became hyper-aware of how twenty-eight works, among them April gender, nationality, ethnicity and culture Hickox’s photographic series entitled contribute to our sense of displacement. Glance (2001). While the design of the Channelling the aesthetics of ancient exhibition mirrored a looping path, and early 20th century objects, visitors were encouraged to adopt an As a poet and darling of many of his An Te Liu’s work compelled us to intuitive understanding of order and peers, Charles Baudelaire captured consider how value and function may reflect on how pattern and classification the rapid cultural changes that were be altered with the passage of time. shape how we see the world around us. underway in Paris. His observations on Similarly engaged in a reassessment beauty and perpetual distractions that of modern abstraction, Sarah Cale’s In recent years we have prioritized can be found in a crowded city paved unconventional paintings revealed a publishing within the scope of our the way for subsequent generations of process of constant renewal whereby departmental activity. In doing artists. Apt, and alarmingly prescient, brushstrokes and fragments of canvases so, we have been able to cultivate Baudelaire’s way of thinking resonates are collaged together to make new new partnerships with our peer with many of today’s artists. The works. Trained in both ballet and organizations across the country and question of how one sees their efforts modern dance, Brendan Fernandes create meaningful opportunities to the within a historical trajectory is still explored the idealism that pervades scholarship that we commission. In being asked today, however through classical dance and brutalist architecture 2015, we completed Gather…Arrange… exciting and unexpected means. We through new performance for video Maintain, a monograph on local artist still, as a species, crave connection and and installation. The existential limits and University of Waterloo Professor belonging, whether that is in virtual of modern life served as the catalyst Emerita, Jane Buyers. Co-published forums or RL (real life). for our fall exhibition programming. by Museum London on the occasion Imitation of Life brought together nine of Buyers’ touring survey exhibition, artists based throughout Canada and the book’s design echoes the artist’s the US, each using various strategies to interests in vernacular materials and explore what it means to “come alive.” craftsmanship, with foil-stamped raw cardboard book-board covers, rounded From year to year, we aim to find corners and a ribbon bookmark.