Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada — November 20, 2019: Today, the University of Regina and the MacKenzie Art Gallery announced that the two organizations have renewed their longstanding partnership agreement.
The 10-year agreement, which follows on one initially signed in 1990, will ensure that in the coming years the MacKenzie will steward and have the opportunity to exhibit more than 1,600 works of art owned by the University. At the same time, the two organizations will expand their relationship in areas such as education, research, joint marketing, and shared resources.
“The University of Regina and the MacKenzie Art Gallery are pleased to renew our longstanding partnership,” said Anthony Kiendl, Executive Director and CEO of the MacKenzie. “Having two of the province’s leading educational institutions working closely together to provide public education about our artistic and cultural heritage continues a long tradition and at the same time opens up exciting new opportunities for the future.”
“The University and the MacKenzie have been intertwined over the past several decades, and that close and enduring relationship is being recognized and celebrated though this agreement,” said Dr. Vianne Timmons, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Regina. “Together, our two organizations have collected, stewarded, and exhibited collections of art that are of national and international significance and form an important part of our cultural landscape. Our commitment to continue this work, of which art education is an important part, is something from which we all can benefit.”
The relationship between the University and the MacKenzie actually pre-dates the formal existence of either institution. In 1936, Regina lawyer Norman MacKenzie bequeathed his collection of close to 400 works of art to the University of Saskatchewan, with provisions for an art gallery to be constructed in Regina to house and exhibit the works.
What was at the time known as the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery eventually opened at Regina College in 1953, continued operation at the University of Saskatchewan – Regina Campus throughout the 1960s, and then became part of the autonomous University of Regina in 1974. The gallery became an independent entity from the University when it moved to its current location in the T.C. Douglas Building, and through a partnership agreement continued stewarding the University of Regina art collection, which had grown to approximately 1,600 pieces.
The agreement fosters research in art and will create new opportunities, one of which is already being realized. Through the agreement, PhD candidate Felicia Gay, working in the University’s Faculty of Media, Art, and Performance as part of the national Mitacs research program, has been simultaneously appointed as a Curatorial Fellow at the MacKenzie and is developing research and exhibitions in Indigenous art, notably in relation to the significant recent acquisition of the Kampelmacher Memorial Collection of Indigenous Art recently gifted to the MacKenzie Art Gallery.
Join the MacKenzie Art Gallery for a public event on Thursday, 16 January at 7 PM as Felicia discusses her work.
Going forward, a gallery space at the MacKenzie will be named after the University in recognition of the
longstanding partnership.