A tourist coming to Nova Scotia wouldn't be able to walk along Spring Garden Road in downtown Halifax without tripping over folk art. Wooden sculptures in bright primary colours stand in welcome outside gift stores and photo shops. In coastal communities all around the province, its presence is everwhere.
Folk art has almost become the visual-arts ambassador for Nova Scotia. But some think the ambassador carries a double-edged sword.
Contemporary artists are part of a growing backlash against folk art, hoping to send the message that it represents only a small portion of the visual-art world here. Nova Scotia, after all, is home to one of Canada's best-known contemporary painters, Alex Colville, as well as the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), which gained an international reputation for ground-breaking ideas in conceptual art. The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS) has some of Alex Colville's paintings in its permanent exhibitions, but has never mounted a solo show of the artist's work.
And now the director of AGNS, Bernie Riordon, has been accused by one of his former employees of skewing the visual-arts scene by providing too much attention to folk art in the provincial public gallery.
Susan MacAlpine Foshay attacked her one-time boss in an editorial for a regional visual-arts magazine, Visual Arts News. She claimed he overstated the value of the work of the late folk-art painter, Joe Norris.
Norris, who died a few years ago, was a fisherman who painted simple landscapes, often of brightly coloured harbour scenes featuring boats and sea gulls. Before he died, one of Norris's artworks sold for $10,000 -- the highest ever paid for the work of a living folk artist in Canada.
Still, Foshay says, Riordon has blown things out of proportion by promoting Norris as one of Canada's best artists in an interview on CBC Radio.
"The thing that prompted the article was . . . Bernie saying Joe Norris defines us as Canadian. I find that problematic," she says.
Surrounded by contemporary art and a large folk-art fish sculpture in her private gallery, Foshay says Riordon is being irresponsible. "I have no problem with Joe Norris," she says, "but he is not the best and he doesn't define us as Canadian."
Foshay is concerned that people hearing the comments will get the wrong impression.
"People believe that stuff and it's not true, it's a joke," she says.
Foshay says she's not against folk art -- in fact, she did graduate studies in material culture, which includes folk art.
After 10 years as a curator with the AGNS, Foshay left several years ago to represent contemporary artists, and has just opened a small gallery on the first floor of her Halifax house. Foshay says that all the attention the AGNS gives to folk art takes away from contemporary artists.
"They're being excluded from $200,000 sponsorships and national circulation," says Foshay, referring to the amount of money AIM Mutual Funds gave the AGNS for Joe Norris's show. The AGNS is touring the Norris exhibition; it opens next month in the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.
Riordon is frustrated by these accusations.
His office is on the second floor of Gallery South of the AGNS, the expansion building located across the courtyard from the old sandstone building. A winding wooden staircase leads up to the reception desk and a mezzanine gallery which houses a collection of contemporary artists from Atlantic Canada.
The walls of Riordon's office and the boardroom behind it are filled with paintings by contemporary artists from the region.
"Shows like [folk artist Maud]Lewis and Joe Norris have helped to promote shows that are less commercial, less [popular]" he says.
Riordon says its easier to get sponsorship money for folk art because it has great popular appeal; it brings people into the gallery.
When the AGNS put on an exhibition of Maud Lewis paintings five years ago, 20,000 people came to see it in Halifax. Lewis, who died in 1970, is so highly regarded that the tiny house from Digby, N.S., where she lived and worked is on display in the gallery. A total of a half million people saw the Lewis exhibition as it toured across the country.
Comparatively, between 5,000 and 7,500 people came to conceptual artist Garry Neill Kennedy's exhibition last year when the AGNS turned over several galleries and hallways to celebrate four decades of work by the former president of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
The newly appointed president of NSCAD, Paul Greenhalgh, says he's looking forward to building a relationship between the two institutions, and in fact the gallery is now raising funds to hold and eventually exhibit the college's archives. When pressed for an opinion on whether contemporary art is playing second fiddle to folk art, he declined to take a position on what he realizes is a contentious issue.
Riordon feels caught between being proud of what the AGNS has done for folk art and defensive about what it does for contemporary art.
"We have 35 galleries here, three of them have folk art, 20 have contemporary art and then the others [have various other art disciplines]" says Riordon.
Riordon lists of a number of facts and figures to demonstrate that not all of his efforts go into presenting folk art.
For example, only 25 per cent of the programming budget last year was spent on folk art and only about 15 per cent of the acquisition budget went to buying new pieces. And, of the more than 9,000 works in the permanent collection, there are only 550 pieces of folk art.
Ingrid Jenkner, director of the Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, says the problem doesn't lie in the hard facts.
"It's not that they do so many folk-art shows -- because they do many, many contemporary art shows. It's that the promotion of the folk-art shows are so much more enthusiastic.
Riordon says it's not a question of energy and enthusiasm. It's a question of what sponsors are willing to put money into.
"We made the same attempt to get a sponsor for the Kennedy show as we did for Norris. The bottom line is, it didn't come in," says Riordon.
"Norris is a little more accessible than Kennedy's work, so it's a question of what people want to align themselves [with]"
Before Foshay's editorial appeared, some frustrated visual artists have quietly grumbled about the profile given to contemporary artists in the region.
That's not the case for the most famous painter living in Nova Scotia.
Alex Colville isn't at all disturbed that there have been major folk-art exhibitions at the AGNS, but never one of his work.
"It never occurred to me to have an exhibition at the AGNS," he says.