Are these the most influential people in Canadian art today?

Don’t agree? Post a comment!

1. Curator: Wayne Baerwaldt.

Wayne Baerwaldt. Image: staffweb.uleth.ca

Curator of this year’s Montreal Biennale, curator of the prize-winning pavilion at the 2001 Venice Biennale (won by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller), and former Director of Toronto’s Power Plant, Baerwaldt is busy promoting artists from the West, particular from Calgary where he is director of the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art & Design.

2. Gallerist: Catriona Jeffries.

Catriona Jeffries. Image: artnet.com

The Vancouver dealer extraordinaire opened an enormous industrial warehouse space on East 1st Street in Vancouver in June 2006, allowing room to exhibit the large scale mixed-media installations that her young artists are known for. Her roster includes art stars Geoffrey Farmer and Brian Jungen.

3. Patron: Salah Bachir.

Salah Bachir. Image: yorku.ca

The outspoken Toronto collector, publisher and businessman recently loaned a number of his Andy Warhols to the Oakville Galleries for a show that rivaled the much-hyped one at the AGO. He began seriously collecting in his early 20s and has been famously supportive of young gay artists over the years (particularly painter Attila Richard Lukacs.) His apparently outstanding personal collection now numbers over 500 works.

4. Young artist: David Altmejd.

David Altmejd and friend. Image: artnet.com

Although not living and working (or represented) in Canada, the London-based Montrealer is doing much to attract attention to the city’s art scene. He will be representing Canada at this year’s Venice Biennale, and with a solo exhibition presently touring the country, Altmejd’s delicate sculptural fantasies are unlike anything the art world has seen before. Using rock crystals, wigs and golden chains with architectural supports and taxidermied animals, his unique style has been snapped up by one of Manhattan’s hottest dealers - Andrea Rosen.

5. Established artist: A tie between Edward Burtynsky and Rodney Graham.

Ed Burtynsky. Image: rdcphoto.com

Artist Rodney Graham in one of his artworks. Image: artnet.com

While Burtynsky is the more popular, vocal, and perhaps more proactive (he founded high-level printing facility Toronto Image Works, co-founded Torontos’ Contact photography festival, received the TED Prize in 2004 and is an Officer of the Order of Canada among other recognitions), Rodney Graham has become one of Canada’s most highly-regarded and respected artists on the international art scene. He represented Canada in 1997 at Venice, had a spectacular solo exhibition that toured Canada in 2004 and is regularly included in museum exhibitions worldwide. He shows with some of the world’s top galleries (Hauser & Wirth, Donald Young, Lisson Gallery) and is gradually realizing his long-held dream of becoming a fully-fledged art rock star.

6. Director: Kathleen Bartels.

Kathleen Bartels with Bruce Mau. Image: vancourier.com

Having just renewed her contract for another five years at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Bartels looks set to continue leading the VAG on to great things. In her first term as director, the Gallery’s endowment increased from $200,000 to $5.7 million, admissions revenue doubled, acquisitions increased and programming became more international. Programming has concentrated on celebrating local stars, old and new, which has done much to promote the city as a scene with a strong past, present and future. Something that other directors in Canada might learn from. Exhibitions have featured work by local collectors Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft, architect Arthur Erickson and young artists Brian Jungen and Jason McLean as well as Haida art.

7. Board member: Rupert Duchesne at the AGO.

Rupert Duchesne. Image: aircanada.com

Mr. Duchesne, who is president and CEO of Aeroplan, is a welcome addition to an institution on life support. He was the man behind the recently announced $50,000 Grange Prize, an annual art award that will go to a Canadian or international photographer. “The Grange Prize will nurture and advance the careers of artists and engage Canadians in the burgeoning genre of art photography. Our commitment to the form is evident,” gushed AGO director Matthew Teitelbaum.

8. Media: Sarah Milroy.

Casting her (not overly) critical eye across the Canadian art landscape, Milroy deconstructs contemporary art’s meaning for the Globe’s reader. The Review section brings Canada’s museum scene together - it’s the one place where you will read about the large group exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Gallery in Ottawa, the Power Plant, the Musee d’Art Contemporain in Montreal and others.

9. Honorary mention: Phyllis Lambert.

Phyllis Lambert. Image: lestudio1.com

(Because even though she’s not strictly speaking visual art, she’s just so damn influential.)

The founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal - one of the country’s most wonderful buildings, libraries, bookshops and exhibition spaces - was famously instrumental in commissioning Mies van der Rohe for New York’s Seagram building in 1958.