AGO hits $1M fundraising goal ahead of signature gala
The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) has reached its goal of raising a million dollars ahead of its signature fundraising event of the year, with its director saying philanthropy now plays a larger role in how the gallery is funded.
This year's Art Bash gala will feature live music, art installations and a live painting demonstration, all meant to push this year's theme of colour.
A table of 10 people at the sold-out gala comes with a price tag of $25,000. With 400 philanthropists expected to arrive, the gallery says the money will be used to support its collections, exhibitions and access programs.
"It's expensive to run a museum with 600 people on staff. And this just goes right to support what we do," said Stephan Jost, the AGO's director and CEO.
The gala will feature an installation called Moments in Modernism to celebrate the gallery's collection of modern art and the role colour plays within it, including collections from artists like Mark Rothko and Ellsworth Kelly, and more installations from Toronto artists.
Different times bring a changing budget
The event comes after a tumultuous year for the gallery — a strike by unionized workers closed its doors for a month this past spring. Among many gains, the strike ended with an 11.4 per cent wage increase for full-time and part-time workers.
Meanwhile, the gallery is also undergoing an expansion project it says will increase the total space available to display art, with at least 13 new galleries across five floors.
The changes are happening at a time where the funding model has shifted in the face of inflation, according to Jost, who said philanthropic funding now represents about a third of the gallery's budget.
'To have even just a single painting exhibited at this art bash is exciting,' Scott Everingham said as he mounted his large painting onto the wall of the AGO Tuesday. (Naama Weingarten/CBC)
In the early 90s, approximately 85 per cent of the gallery's funds came from the public sector, says Jost.
But with provincial funding not catching up with rising prices, public money now makes up around a third of the gallery's budget — roughly the same as the gallery earns from its donors. The rest comes from the sale of tickets, food, drinks and other traditional revenue streams, he said.
With the world becoming more polarizing, Jost says art is increasingly a place to find connection.
"Whether it's TIFF or Hot Docs or the ROM or the AGO, we help build social cohesion, right? You can walk in and you can see something totally new," he said.
"And it's hard to do, but it's really important that we have strong institutions that bring people together."
Local artists, performers honoured
CBC Toronto dropped by the gallery Monday, where artist Sean Weisgerber was hard at work finishing his installation. The piece features hundreds of colourful stickers on the gallery's walls with messages such as, "5 of you paid my artist fee," and "sell your soul & buy my work."
Weisgerber said that in a world where artists normally question institutions, the words on the stickers are meant to represent an artist's role within them, in his case doing an installation for an event to raise money for the gallery.
"There have been some heated debates around the institution in the last couple of years. And I think this is a really nice way to be playfully engaging those ongoing questions around that," he said.
In another room, artist Scott Everingham was mounting a piece stretching roughly 305 centimetres tall and 610 centimetres wide, named The Vibration for the big gala. It's the largest painting he said he's ever made, he says.
Everingham, who regularly visits the AGO, says he got the idea for the large piece from a friend who encouraged him to make the most out of the opportunity.
"He just said, 'Do the biggest damn painting you can,'" Everingham said.
"It's always been an institution that I can come to and just experience some fantastic things. So to have even just a single painting exhibited at this art bash is exciting."
AGO's Art Bash gala in 2022, which had the theme All Out!, marking return of the event post-pandemic. (Submitted by the Art Gallery of Ontario)
To Mony Zakhour, an artist and art curator who will be doing a live art demonstration at the gala, it's also about the platform the event gives to local artists.
"Growing up, who doesn't want to be part of the AGO?" he said. "It's always great to spotlight Canadian artists and even more so local artists within the city."
The gala after-party will feature a performance by drag queen Tynomi Banks, who said they're excited for a chance to hype up the crowd in a tribute to the art gallery they visited as a little kid growing up in the GTA.
"I've always been raising money, doing things for the community... and I'm going to make sure they know that I will not let them down in this performance as well," they said.