The Canada Council for the Arts announced today that the Beaverbrook Art Gallery is the recipient of the 2008 York Wilson Endowment Award, an award given annually to an art museum or public gallery to assist with the purchase of a single work by a Canadian artist.

Graeme Patterson, The Barn, 2004-2006. Image: canadacouncil.ca/courtesy Graeme Patterson

The Gallery will use the $20,000 award to purchase The Barn, including the animation Romancing the Farm, by 28 year-old Halifax-based artist Graeme Patterson.

A work by Graeme Patterson. Image: mala.ca

The Beaverbrook must be hoping that this signals a turning point in what has been a nightmare for the gallery in recent months - a fight with the Beaverbrook United Kingdom Foundation, who wants ownership of paintings worth $100 million that they claim were lent to the institution, while the gallery maintains that they were gifts from Lord Beaverbrook.

The Windsor Star says: “The long-running battle between the heirs of British Lord Max Aiken, known as Lord Beaverbrook, and the art gallery over whether Aiken loaned or donated 133 pieces of art to the gallery now rests with the judges who must decide whether an arbitrator erred by giving the gallery control over 85 of the disputed pieces.”

Lord Beaverbrook (William Maxwell Aitken). Image: photobucket.com

Read a news article HERE.

Click HERE for the Beaverbrook Gallery website, and to view works from the collection.

Graeme Patterson is represented in Toronto by Tatar Gallery.