[MSN] Art transport service killed

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Art transport service killed
Move could threaten Ottawa's plan to decentralize national museums

VAL ROSS

>From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

Even as federal politicians are scheming and dreaming of ways to fund national museums in Winnipeg and Calgary, and bring national heritage treasures to the regions, the federal bureaucracy is quietly killing a program that supports the transportation of such treasures.

Exhibition Transport Services (15-metre-long, climate-controlled trucks, and drivers trained to handle art) is to be phased out by April, 2008. Alarmed gallery and museum directors calculate that switching to private-sector carriers will up their costs by as much as 30 per cent.

For a medium-sized museum or gallery trying to recoup the costs of mounting an exhibition by touring it to four other centres, this could mean an additional cost of as much as $18,000. "With ETS, each venue pays for their leg of the journey but the host museum pays to gather the art and then bring it back," explains John Ryerson, director of the Varley Art Gallery of Markham, Ont., which is currently touring such an exhibition. "Now, what with fuel surcharges and so on, it's going to be harder than ever to keep costs down."

Jeanne Inch, director of the Canadian Conservation Institute -- the Canadian Heritage Department agency responsible for the ETS -- says the cut was not a matter of Tory policy but a Revenue Canada regulation. Two years ago, her agency was warned to bring ETS's employer-employee relations into line with the rest of the government, "But the 'driver: fine-arts handler' category doesn't exist," she says, adding that if her agency had harmonized ETS with standard federal employee relations, issues of driver per diems, standby pay and so on would have raised ETS's rates in any case.

While the death of the service hobbles arts and museum curators across Canada, it actively trips up the Stephen Harper government's hopes of decentralizing national museums and moving the Portrait Gallery of Canada to Calgary's soon-to-be-built EnCana office tower. The feds planned to truck the paintings and photos chosen from the gallery's vast collection, stored in Gatineau, Que., to Alberta when needed, and then truck them back for safe storage.

By increasing transport costs, the ETS cancellation bolsters the arguments of those who would keep the Portrait Gallery in Ottawa. So do rocketing construction costs in boomtown Calgary.

When it was announced that EnCana might contribute $30-million toward the Portrait Gallery's $44-million cost, it initially looked like the energy company was offering to assume three-quarters of the gallery's cost, a model of the Tories' dream of public-private partnerships for the cultural sector.

"But it seems that the 'contribution' was more in the form of space in the mall ground floor of EnCana's new Bow Tower," says Liberal Senator Serge Joyal. He says the deal would in fact have required the Portrait Gallery to pay for interior construction, installation of lights, walls and museum-standard conservation conditions. Indeed, the gallery space EnCana was offering was so expensive it was rejected when originally offered to Calgary's own Glenbow Museum.

Complicating matters, the office tower has changed hands: In February, EnCana sold the property to the Toronto-based H&R Real Estate Investment Trust and will lease office space from them. New management at EnCana and new ownership realities may squash the offer of space in the Bow building.

Even if they do not, "Would the Portrait Gallery have to pay rent or other costs that would reflect the conditions of the Calgary market?" demands Joyal. "That too would increase the operation costs of the gallery." He adds, "Strange: For a government committed to accountability and transparency, this is the most secretive file -- yet it has nothing to do with security or defence. It's heritage!"

Maybe the feds aren't being secretive, but are in a state of shock. Canada's heritage institutions, a file to which they expected to pay little attention, is proving surprisingly complex (Stephen Harper is said to have assumed personal control over the fate of the proposed Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg). And the rising cost of trucking Canadian portraits to a Calgary venue is one more nasty surprise.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/