Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
The Daily Photoist: November 23, 2009
“You can try to take away my coffees and my creams. Go ahead. I’m still here. I’m still going to get re-elected." Councillors Giorgio Mammoliti and Paul Ainslie scrapped it out yesterday in city hall over free coffee. The delicious roasted bean elixir is offered free to city councillors and costs taxpayers $20,000 per year.
The Art Gallery of Ontario announced a landmark donation of $10-million from twenty of Toronto's most prominent Italian-Canadian families.The money will go towards the building's new sculpture promenade, now to be named the "Galleria Italia". While there is no word yet of what specific pieces will fill the space, it seemed the intention of the donors to pay homage to the Italy's Renaissance masters. Ambassador Gabriele Sardo also hinted that the Italian government will donate several pieces of contemporary Italian sculpture.
Icy weather caused over 50 accidents overnight, and closed the Don Valley Parkway at 7 a.m. Weather reports show that it ain't gonna get much better over the course of the day.
City auditors are reporting 503 fraud complaints this year, which reveal some creative scams from municipal employees. One supervisor authorized black-market swimming lessons in a city pool while personally collecting the registration fees. Municipal employees scammed $33,196 from Toronto residents in 2006 which, besides being a asshole thing to do, is pretty crafty.
Councillor John Filion (Ward 23, Willowdale) is fighting for your right to find healthy street food alternatives. Currently, Toronto health regulations state that street food may only take the form of pre-cooked sausages, but wouldn't the city be glorious with roasted corn, goat roti, oyster omelettes and salted herrings on every major street corner?
Police raided the largest Hells Angels clubhouse in the country yesterday, located on Eastern Avenue. One visitor described the space as "immaculate, very clean...like a well-appointed den." That is, if your den is filled with pot, hookers and burly hit men. I know mine is...
"HAHA! I like Alanis all over again," says YouTube member dannosaurus about Alanis Morisette's My Humps video. "This is just perfect. Really shows how stupid those lyrics actually are." Wait, he didn't notice before? National news sources report on this recent meme that Torontoist and everyone else on the internet reported on yesterday. I love it when that happens.
Fabulous photo courtesy of Sarosh Khwaja in the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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It never ceases to amaze and disappoint me how much private donorship shapes our "public" institutions.
yeah, damn those italians. imagine, making a huge group donation to an art gallery and then turning around and asking for a part of the building to be named after their country.
if that's not the soul of evil, i don't know what is.
Try raising property taxes to support art. Not going to happen.
Reality is many people have no interest in the arts, and many of the ones who do can't afford regular support (hello, $20 exhibition fees, or $150 seats that don't absolutely suck!).
The AGO would have to have some set of steel balls -- maybe by a local artist! -- to ask for $10 million from the province when the city can't fix potholes in the road.
Also, hell, half of the collections in the AGO and ROM wouldn't exist without the shady practise of patronage.
Maybe we could have a system where the City would match donations - if we can match donations to councillors on a 3:1 basis we can certainly look at a 1:1 split for City institutions surely?
Also - let's not forget that the very generous donors will probably be getting about 25% back between federal and provincial personal tax deductions!
"Half of the collections in the AGO and ROM wouldn't exist without the shady practise of patronage."
My point exactly. Now, I'm sure Gloria's use of "shady" is meant to be ironic, and James, I'm not by any means calling the Italian donors evil. It's true that the arts would scarcely survive in this country without private patronage, but to me that signifies a systemic problem concerning distribution of wealth and the importance of the arts according to our government and in our society.
I'm excited about the new galleries at the AGO but find it unfortunate that the personal preferences of a few obscenely wealthy individuals (read: Ken Thompson et al) determine what is represented in one of the country's most important collections.
Pandora - it must be the wealth that has you all agitated, for it can't be that its that it is the preferences of the few. If it was the latter, you would have to then open it up to the preferences of the many, and well...we know what that would produce. Or the preferences of some group of critics and artistic elites who could decide (would that be any better?). But even if someone else decides, where do these works of art come from to be displayed in our public institutions?
To counter the wealthy, maybe the not so wealthy (or artists) could donate their works of art to the ROM, AGO etc. I'm sure they would be open to that.
Sorry, but if by "critics and artistic elites" you mean people who are highly trained and have dedicated their lives' work to the arts - for instance, the researchers, curators, and programmers employed by the AGO - uh yeah, I think that would be better.
I do like your idea of artists donating their works to the AGO however, like as a sort of insitutional intervention. Of course the Gallery wouldn't accept most artists' donations, but it would make for an interesting project.
I was mostly referring to the long and storied tradition of patronage; I had the Renaissance in mind particularly, like the Medici family. Paying to have a gallery named for your homeland is pretty benign compared to paying to put yourself in the Adoration of the Magi, but if it hadn't been done (and paid for), we wouldn't have that art today.
Pandora, this is an interesting topic, but could you say if you're thinking of any specific instances of "personal preferences"? Are you unhappy, for example, that local artists don't have as much representation in the AGO? That's one thing that occurred to me, but I'm not totally sure if that's it.
Yes, art has always been intertwined with elitist discourses, and perhaps modernism has seen it transfer to an academic (and sometimes even Bohemian) elitism, rather than strictly one of wealth.
I really don't mind "Galleria Italia"; it's preferable to the "Tanenbaum Atrium," the "Michael Lee Chin Crystal," or the "Four Seasons Centre." I was mainly irked by the suggestion that the gallery will now be geared towards Italian Renaissance masters. Not that I have anything against Italian Renaissance masters, but these are the things that shape a gallery collection (not unlike Thomson's donation of Group of Seven/Tom Thompson/Krieghoffs).
It's a major question you ask, Gloria, and I don't want to get into what does or doesn't belong at the AGO. I just think we should be cognizant that these philanthropic acts have strings attached - some argue that the AGO has become Thomson's art-filled mausoleum! I wish I could offer a clear solution, but like I said I think it's a systemic and societal problem that goes beyond individual intentions and the names over the doorways.