AGAin!

When a group of women involved in the Edmonton arts scene first met to discuss the idea of putting on an art exhibition, few would have imagined it one day becoming one of the country’s largest art galleries. Few, that is, outside of Art Association member Maud Bowman, who envisioned growing the exhibition of loaned artworks into a permanent, Edmonton-based collection. After the first exhibition attracted more than 2,000 visitors over three days to the Palm
room of the Hotel Macdonald — Bowman organized the group under the banner of the Edmonton Museum of the Arts, and served as its first director.

The only problem was that the Edmonton Museum of the Arts didn’t have a museum, so while the group slowly put together a collection of local and international works, it had to find venues to host the exhibitions on an as-needed basis including libraries, car dealerships and other friendly spaces in the city. The Edmonton Arts Museum would exist for the next 30 years as part art gallery, part traveling show.“[Maud] strongly felt that as the city was growing, it needed a place for arts and culture for the citizens of Edmonton,” says Catherine Crowston, executive director and chief curator of the Art Gallery of Alberta. “Interestingly enough, as a woman art museum director at that time, she didn’t get paid a salary. It was only, actually, until she retired and was replaced by a male director that there was a salaried position.”

Despite working against sexism, prejudice and the city’s growing but still-naive understanding of the arts, Bowman’s influence was undeniable. Her mantle would later be taken up by other enterprising women, including Dorothy “Bobby” Dyde, whose curatorial reforms helped modernize a collection that is now over 6,500 works strong, and Abigail Condell, who donated the funds necessary to build the Art Gallery its first purpose-built space in the Arthur Blow Condell Memorial Building. That legacy even extends to Crowston, who assumed
the role of chief curator in 1998 and eventually executive director in 2012. During her tenure, she has seen the gallery through a name change — the gallery rebranded as the Alberta Art Gallery in 2005 — the opening of a new building and, as of 2024, the Art Gallery of Alberta’s (AGA’s) 100-year anniversary.

“Those [women] were really the backbone of some of the activities that the gallery relies on regarding audience engagement and fund development, but they were doing it a lot of the time in a volunteer capacity,” Crowston says. “As we look through the history of the art galleries — with the AGA and probably with others across the country — those women make profound contributions to making sure that the art galleries survive, thrive and build community in the places in which they are.”

“Artistic literacy is so important for a person to be well-rounded,” says local artist Lynn Malin, speaking of Art Gallery of Alberta’s role as a space for art education as well as art appreciation. “When you listen to music or read books or go to school, you learn things you wouldn’t necessarily learn anywhere else. But, in art, you learn so much that you don’t even realize you’re learning. That’s what is so interesting about it.”

Malin has taught art classes at the AGA in addition to formerly working as an art teacher at Harry Ainlay High School. Her art ranges from sculptures to canvas paintings to, more recently, evocative landscapes painted onto polycarbonate lexan. Malin’s work is currently on show as part of the AGA100, which is a series of exhibitions specially curated to celebrate the AGA’s first century. It runs until spring 2025. This year’s centennial celebration has the AGA not just reflecting, but looking forward too. In fact, the AGA has recently teamed up with Edmonton Community Foundation to establish the AGA Always endowment fund. The AGA has already raised more than $2 million in support of the $20 million goal, which is meant to go to improving visitor experiences, renovations and much more.

“We tied the campaign to the anniversary because we thought it would be a moment for both celebration but also connection with a lot more people,” says Crowston, who openly acknowledges the financial difficulties that have faced the AGA since the pandemic. “The idea of the endowment is to create long-term, sustainable funding for the gallery so that we’re not so tied to the ebbs and flows, or in some cases, peaks and troughs of the economy and how it can impact non-
profit organizations.”

Crowston is confident that the Art Gallery of Alberta will not only be able to weather its current financial difficulties — with the help of the endowment, of course — but also adapt to whatever the next century of art might bring, even if it isn’t quite what Maud Bowman would have had in mind. “Art changes with the times,” says Crowston. “But I do fundamentally believe that there will always be a place for handmade things that people craft with their hands and where you can feel the presence of the person in the made object. I hope that the art gallery is still here and engaging what would probably be a very kind of different population. I think one of the things we also have to think about is sustainability and what does a look like in a changing climate environment? Those are challenges we’re all going to face as we go forward and think about our buildings and their operations.”