As far as I know, Mayor Larry and I agree on only one issue – we both want Ottawa to be home to the National Portrait Gallery. The Prime Minister wants to give it to Alberta.
Here’s Kelly Egan’s column (September 07) about why the gallery should be housed across the street from Parliament Hill, in the former US embassy building. I agree absolutely.
Ottawa Centre MP Paul Dewar has organized a Friday lunchtime rally to keep the Portrait Gallery in Ottawa. Here are the details:
Momentum for tomorrow’s rally is growing. Take this last opportunity to
spread the message and bring out as many people as possible to the rally.When: Friday May 16, 2008, 12 noon
Where: NCC InfoCentre, across from Parliament Hill
What: Rally to Keep the Portrait Gallery in the Capital + mass portrait to be shot by world renowned Ottawa photographer Paul Couvrette
Why: Cabinet is considering whether to keep the gallery in Ottawa or send it to Alberta. We believe that the National Portrait Gallery should stay in the Nation’s Capital.Watch Paul’s youtube video on the gallery.
Visit the Rally’s event page on Facebook.Invite your friends, spread the message, and keep the gallery in the capital!
Paul Dewar | MP | Ottawa Centre
TAGS:
Keep the gallery in Ottawa, or keep it in that building? I’m a big fan of the idea of making the photographic portion of the Portrait Gallery a relatively substantial part of a greatly expanded Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography… and the painted portraits should definitely have their own home in an expanded National Gallery. The idea of a gallery, on its own, dedicated to a single category of art just seems… light for a National Museum/Gallery.
Ideally I’d like to keep it in both Ottawa and that building. My second choice would be somewhere else in downtown Ottawa.
There’s a huge collection of portraiture in Ottawa – more than enough to justify a dedicated gallery. (From the Gallery’s site: “…the largest group of national portraits in the country: more than 20,000 paintings, drawings and prints, 4 million photographs, several thousand caricatures, and ten thousand medals and philatelic items.”
I aqree with you zoom, but I’m sorry to say I don’t think we’re going to win this one. The PM wants that building for his own use and he wants to give the portrait gallery to a city in Alberta. He isn’t known for being reasonable or changing his mind.
I know, Robin, but I never give up without a fight. The PM might be jarred out of his complacency if people show up in unignorable numbers.
Unignorable. I think I just invented that word.
I still think the portrait gallery could be better served as a part of a larger museum/gallery… the National Archives/Library hosts portrait shows once in a while and I have to say, after twenty faces it gets a little tedious. But moving a national gallery, even one that only kind of exists, outside of Ottawa would be wrong… if it has to be someplace then in that building is better than west of Kanata.
National gallery=Ottawa, provincial gallery=provincial capital.
BTW: “Unignorable” would look awesome on a t-shirt.
Though it’s far from being the point, if you look at the Youtube video at about the 1:21 point…does the portrait behind him not look like Mr. Dewar? I was so distracted by that, I had to play the video twice.
Linda – I just took a look, and I know I should know who that is, but I don’t. It’s not Paul Dewar though – maybe one of his 19th century colleagues?