Rumour has it that the newly released Creative Capital Plan, which makes a strong case for Toronto’s art and culture sector as a significant industry and revenue generator, may be short-lived.

Image: ocad.ca

The report, headed up by Councillor Michael Thompson (Ward 37 Scarborough Centre), Chair of the City’s Economic Development Committee, is billed as a partnership between the City and the arts and culture community, and provides recommendations to update the City’s last culture plan from 2003.

In 1998, the newly amalgamated City had a Culture Plan drafted “to help guide the city’s cultural development for the next decade.” The first plan focused on larger cultural initiatives – and we now have the Ballet School, the Canadian Opera Company, OCAD University, the ROM and the Art Gallery of Ontario to show for it.  The new report recognizes the value of small arts operations as well as the need to connect them with like-minded organizations and their initiatives.

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We hear that national critic Sarah Milroy and Toronto ‘Gallery Going’ writer Gary Michael Dault are going freelance at Canada’s largest-circulation national newspaper the Globe and Mail, leaving a big dark hole where the visual arts writing used to be.

Image: dspace.mit.edu

However, R.M Vaughn, the writer/artist/poet/critic who currently writes a film/celebrity interview column for the paper, will take over the Toronto coverage with a weekly column titled The Exhibitionist, (starting May 8th) but we can’t imagine that he’ll be there for too long. He seems to be a busy guy, showing his short videos around the world, among other things.

Rumour has it that certain not-for-profit arts organizations are unhappy about this lessening of coverage, enough to be discussing what to do about it and how to take matters into their own hands.

Stay tuned for more on this one…

Rumour has it that some artists aren’t pleased with the way the Vancouver Olympics is being handled.

Image: mediacoop.ca

We’ve been hearing rumblings for some time now of artists being censored, their ‘anti-Olympics’ works removed or under threat of removal and constraints being put on artists who are being commissioned to make works to showcase Vancouver’s visual art scene.

Much of the debate arises from this contractual clause: “The artist shall at all times refrain from making any negative or derogatory remarks respecting VANOC (the organizing committee), the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Olympic movement generally, Bell and/or other sponsors associated with VANOC.”

Vancouver has the most condensed area of homelessness and addiction in Canada and many Vancouver artists take inspiration from the grittiness of the Downtown East Side. We can imagine that they wouldn’t agree with an Olympic Committee that may be glossing over this aspect of the city.

“Art without free speech is simply propaganda“, says The BC Civil Liberties Association president Rob Holmes.

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This year’s Sobey Art Prize shortlist is Luanne Martineau (West Coast & Yukon); Marcel Dzama (Prairies & The North); Shary Boyle (Ontario); David Altmejd (Québec) and Graeme Patterson (Atlantic)

Shary Boyle, To Colonize the Moon, 2008. To Colonize the Moon. Porcelain, enamel, gilt, diamond, mirror. Image: sharyboyle.com

The Sobey Art Prize is around the corner, and while this year it’s impossible to predict, rumour has it that it may be Shary Boyle. Ontario has yet to win, and Shary Boyle has had a great few years, with national and international exhibitions, museum shows and a gorgeous hard cover catalogue on her work.

However.

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Rumour has it that video artist extraordinaire Bill Viola will be part of a three-person exhibition coming to the Royal Ontario Museum in June 2009!

Bill Viola, Five Angels for the Millennium [detail] Departing Angel, 2001. Video/sound installation. Image: Kira Perov/tokyoartbeat.com

The exhibition will, apparently, be mounted by the ICC at the ROM in response to the upcoming exhibition of sixteen of the Dead Sea Scrolls. We hear that the curator has chosen one Christian artist, one Jewish artist and one Muslim artist for the show.

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We were going to post a rumour that we have heard – that the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art has let go Sue Jeffries, their enthusiastic curator of Modern & Contemporary Ceramics.

We also heard that they might be closing their entire contemporary department, but now we hear that this is NOT true and that they will continue curating contemporary exhibitions.

VoCA says: Thank goodness!

Shary Boyle, Snowball,2006. Porcelain, china paint. Image: todayandtomorrow.net

As the worlds of art and design increasingly blend, there are more and more amazing things happening in ceramics. In recent years young designers have collaborated and reinvented the designs of traditional firms – witness the avant garde Dutch design team Studio Job and their Biscuit collection designed especially for Royal Tichelaar.

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VoCA is very sad about a rumour that we hope isn’t true.

YDESSA HENDELES IS CLOSING HER ART FOUNDATION.

One of Canada’s finest curators – if not the finest – has, apparently decided to focus her energies on curating in Europe, saying that it’s too expensive to maintain her eponymous foundation and to keep collecting.

We can only hope that she continues to curate in this country, and that she changes her mind.

Visit now (Saturdays only or by appointment) before it’s too late at 778 King St. West Toronto. Phone: (416) 413-9400.

Rumour has it that the Venice Architecture Biennale is coming to Cambridge Ontario!

Apparently, the Biennale Foundation has agreed to work with the University of Waterloo to create a ‘preview’ of sorts this coming summer. This show will become the basis for the next Architecture Biennale in 2010/2011.

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Rumour has it that London-based film artist Mark Lewis will be selected as Canada’s representative for next year’s Venice Biennale.

Mark Lewis, Rush Hour, Morning and Evening, Cheapside (2005). Image: marklewisstudio.com

We sure hope this rumour his true – Lewis has long been one of VoCA’s favorite artists and we think he’d be brilliant.

Stay tuned for the official announcement…

Mark Lewis’s website – click HERE

Mark Lewis is represented in Canada by Monte Clark Gallery – click HERE