The Nanaimo Art Gallery has played an important role in making the visual arts more accessible and raising public awareness of the visual arts in Nanaimo and across Central Vancouver Island.
The Gallery?s vision for the collection is to continue to foster the appreciation and development of Central Vancouver Island visual arts through the collection. The mandate for the collection would include a commitment to renewing the process of collecting visual artworks and begin to re-build an important cultural resource for the people of Nanaimo and Central Vancouver Island and create an artistic legacy for the benefit of future generations. Public art collections such as the one at the Gallery preserve the visual culture of the region, show support for professional visual artists in the community and provide an accessible educational resource for all sectors of every community in Nanaimo and Central Vancouver Island.
The beginnings of the Permanent Art Collection began in 1985 with an acquisition of a small watercolour and ink sketch by Lloyd Witham from the Eaton Foundation. The mandate of the Permanent Art Collection is to help nurture the history and tradition of fine arts practice in Nanaimo and Central Vancouver Island. This mandate is expressed through making the aesthetics of Island visual artists more accessible, promoting the rich diversity of visual artists and investigating the different aesthetic and culture perspectives artists from across Canada.
The Gallery collection is small but eclectic and encompass a variety of art mediums that include 58 works on paper, 12 paintings, 26 photographs and 1 sculpture. The art works in the collection deals with a variety of subject matter including figurative, landscape and animal themes, portraits, still life and abstract work. The collection has 10 works from First Nations and Nunavut as well as work of Chinese and European artist from both Canada and abroad.
The collection features the work of artists including; B.C. Binning, Alexander Calder Jack Chambers, Akira Fujioka, E.J. Hughes, Wang Jinglong, Mary Okheena, Bill Reid, Charles H. Scott, Joanne Cardinal-Schubert and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun
The focus of the collection is to build, maintain and exhibit art works of past and present Central Island visual artists and acquire work from across Canada and internationally. The galley?s permanent collection also functions as a means of supporting contemporary visual artists and plays an important role in encouraging, identifying, recording and evaluating the visual arts in Central Vancouver Island and across Canada.
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900 Fifth Street, Nanaimo, BC V9R 5S5 | 250 740-6350
