Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank you—and all committee members—for this opportunity to meet you. Today marks the 114th day since I joined the National Gallery of Canada as Director and CEO.
My journey is uniquely Canadian. It started here, extended globally, and refocused on the work I could do at home. Previously, I developed Plural, Canada's second-largest art fair, co‑founded the private art foundation Arsenal Contemporary Art, which has venues in Montreal, Toronto and New York City which is dedicated to helping Canadian contemporary artists reach wider national and international audiences.
I then joined the Musée d'Art de Joliette as Executive Director, Chief Curator and Director of Philanthropy. Over a seven-year period, we doubled in‑person visits to the museum and multiplied philanthropic donations by a factor of 20. We did so by leveraging the creativity, expertise and ambition of the curatorial, operational and administrative teams, by fostering a sense of community and belonging for the donors, volunteers and visitors who trusted us to deliver on our shared vision and by expanding our collection, which now has over 9,000 works spanning 5,000 years of visual art history, in an accessible physical and virtual environment.
Joining the National Gallery of Canada represents an exceptional opportunity. We have an extraordinary team of curatorial and administrative staff whose commitment to building, sharing and preserving a collection that benefits all Canadians is unfailing. We collaborate with volunteers, donors and partners from across Canada whose ambitions for the gallery are limitless.
The value of these relationships was felt most intensely during the pandemic. Fiscal 2022-23 began as the world emerged from COVID-19. Last year, total attendance at the gallery was 279,000—up 68% from the year before—and revenues from operations were up by 81% to $7.7 million. Most importantly, the gallery could not have survived that test without the support of the government and Parliament.
The National Gallery of Canada Foundation, as well as our distinguished patrons and corporate partners, also made extremely generous contributions, including art donations valued at $11.1 million, helping us to further enhance the collection.
Building from these successes, I intend to focus on three key points that will all be articulated through art.
First, we put at the centre of everything we do meaningful and collaborative relationships with our employees, visitors, donors, volunteers, community partners and stakeholders. We are at our strongest when we act as a platform to pursue our collective ambitions as a community of shared interests.
Second, we want the gallery to remain a place where the collections, the exhibitions and the experiences that we facilitate are the vehicle for diversity, dialogue and inclusiveness. We’re going to make sure that artwork, rather than corporate policies, does the talking.
Finally, we need to keep our strategic focus on transforming the gallery into a modern institution that helps Canadian artists from each of our diverse communities find their voices in local, national and international conversations. We’ll do this by expanding our collection and by building partnerships that help our exhibitions reach galleries, museums and artist-run centres across the country. We’ll also build the gallery of tomorrow by digitizing our collections and fostering online communities so that Canadians anywhere can enjoy our offerings any time.
I'm confident we will succeed. I encourage you to look to our fall programming for signs of what is still to come. From the 2023 Sobey Art Awards, our new “Riopelle: Crossroads in Time” centenary retrospective, our forthcoming “Humour and Horror” exhibition of indigenous artist Nick Sikkuark's work, to the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts, the Gallery will be the hub of enlightening, lively and inclusive dialogue about the role of art in shaping the Canada we know and love.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.