Notable donations of Canadian art have raised its stature – and prices
Two new exhibits highlight the impact of wealthy collectors on the value of home-grown art
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The Canadian art world has changed a lot since 1951, when the government’s Massey Commission released its report on the state of the nation’s “arts, letters and sciences.” The commission found that Canadians weren’t really collecting Canadian art.
That has changed substantially in the past few decades. Historical works, including the paintings of the Group of Seven, were among the first to find favour, says Grant Arnold, the Audain Curator of British Columbia Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Today, collectors have a robust interest in more contemporary art, he says, because as people begin collecting, “they become interested in art that speaks to their present moment.”
But a key catalyst for the Canadian art landscape has been the influence of wealthy collectors. Experts point to the snowball effect created by the relationship between art galleries and private collectors, since most institutions rely on gifts of art to build their collections.
The outstanding example to date is of course media magnate Ken Thomson, who donated his $300 million collection to the Art Gallery of Ontario upon his death in 2006. The gift consisted of about 2,000 works, including Canadian paintings by Cornelius Krieghoff, Tom Thomson, Paul-Emile Borduas and William Kurelek.
Along with a $50-million donation to the gallery’s Frank Gehry-led renovation and a $4.5-million contribution in 1982 to the construction of Roy Thomson Hall, home of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the bequest represents a unique legacy for the Thomson family, which heir David Thomson continues to build upon.
Donations by Ash K. Prakash
In 2015, Toronto-based art collector Ash K. Prakash donated 50 works by Canadian painter James Wilson Morrice (1865-1924) to the National Gallery of Canada. They were valued at $20 million at the time.
“It was a painful decision,” he says. “I had fallen in love, essentially, with a great Canadian artist, and I spent a lifetime following him, but I felt those collections belong to the next generation.”
Prakash, who has acted as an advisor to some of Canada’s pre-eminent collectors, built his own collection painstakingly, piece by piece. Born in India and educated in the U.S., he entered the Canadian civil service in the 1960s. It was a trip to Paris for a UNESCO posting that ignited his interest in serious art collection.
“One doesn’t need to be a Rockefeller to do these things,” he says. “I came to this country with nothing 50 years ago, and today there’s a gallery named after me at the National Gallery of this country: woof!”
As the director of the National Gallery Foundation and the chair of the A.K. Prakash Foundation, which supports Canadian historical art, Prakash says he has observed three motivations for investing in art – one as a collector, another as a supporter or patron of art, and a third as a speculator.
“We live in a capitalistic society, and it is seen as an asset class,” he says. “Serious art collecting and art patronage are still confined to a very small inner circle.”
Narrow as this niche may be, it is responsible for an enormous contribution to the understanding and appreciation of Canadian art – and to the careers of individual artists.
Exhibition at the National Gallery
But philanthropists derive satisfaction from supporting arts institutions in other ways besides donating art.
“It’s become more common now for patrons to endow positions within institutions,” says Grant Arnold. “My salary is funded by an endowment from [B.C.-based home builder and art collector] Michael Audain. And we do rely very much on sponsorships for exhibitions.”
The A.K. Prakash Foundation is the patron of an exhibition called “Canada and Impressionism: New Horizons” that will hang at the National Gallery of Canada until July 3. It features 108 paintings produced in the decades around 1900, on loan from private and public collections across Canada, and reveals an under-recognized side of Canadian art history, not least in the representation of female painters.
Pierre Lassonde Family Foundation
Another supporter of the exhibition is the Pierre Lassonde Family Foundation, which recently saw a growth spurt in assets from less than $80 million to more than $198 million.
Quebec-born mining entrepreneur Pierre Lassonde chaired the board of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec from 2005 to 2016, donating $10 million to the institution during that time and helping to raise an additional $100 million for a Canadian art pavilion at the museum.
He then moved to the Canada Council for the Arts, where he served as board chair. Also, in 2021 he gave $5 million to Mount Allison University to create the Pierre Lassonde School of Fine Arts.
Donald R. Sobey Family Foundation
Also sponsoring the “Canada and Impressionism” exhibition is the Donald R. Sobey Family Foundation.
The Sobey family, which has greatly influenced the art world through its annual Sobey Art Award for contemporary Canadian artists, is being honoured in an exhibition currently at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, a museum in Vaughan, Ont. “Generations: The Sobey Family and Canadian Art” brings together more than 170 works representing early Canada, the Group of Seven, 20th-century Quebec painters and Indigenous artists, up to present-day figures such as Kent Monkman.
From the McMichael, the show will travel to St. John’s, Nfld. (June 2022 to January 2023), Edmonton (spring 2023), Charlottetown (summer 2023) and Halifax (fall 2023).
From ‘affordable’ to big money
When Ash Prakash began collecting Canadian art, “it was so affordable that no one was paying attention,” he says. “The first Tom Thomson I bought was $50,000. Little did I know that it would sell for $2 million or $3 million.”
But financial return has not been his main motivation for acquiring art.
“How do you measure the return? Is it only in terms of the financial return, or is it also the intangible return of living with it? I pour a glass of wine and I sit before a fireplace and I enjoy my art. Both ways are valid; it’s your call,” he says.
“When you go to the AGO, it doesn’t matter how much money Ken Thomson had, or left,” says Prakash. “What he left on those walls will live for a thousand years.”