ART AND
POLITICS
The History of the National Arts Centre
ART AND
POLITICS
The History of the National Arts Centre
Sarah Jennings
Copyright © Sarah Jennings, 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Project Editor: Michael Carroll
Editor: Rosemary Shipton
Text Design: Kim Monteforte, WeMakeBooks.ca
Printer: Friesens
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Jennings, Sarah
Art and politics : the history of the National Arts Centre / by Sarah Jennings.
ISBN 978-1-55002-886-7
1. National Arts Centre (Canada)--History. 2. Performing arts--Canada--History. I. Title.
PN1589.C3J45 2009 791.09713’84 C2009-900097-0
1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
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To Hamish
CONTENTS
8 Elegance and Operas
PART TWO The Difficult Years
9 New Man in Town
10 A Cultural Investigation
11 Change and Loss
12 The Reality of the Plight
13 Rudderless Months
14 Times Get Tougher
15 Television: The Longed-for Panacea
PART THREE The Renaissance
16 Stumbling Forward
17 A Short Run
18 Upset and Renewal
19 The Road to Recovery
20 The Reblooming of the Arts
21 The Pinchas Factor
22 The Art of the Possible
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index
Canada’s National Arts Centre (NAC) opened its doors to the world on Monday, June 2, 1969. It was unique. Built both to produce and to present music, opera, dance, and theatre, it was also bilingual, designed to reflect Canada’s linguistic duality—the first, and still the only, arts centre in the world with such a complex mandate. A fortuitous crossing of the stars had brought it about. While rooted in the modest hopes of Ottawa’s local citizens to build a good concert hall in their city, the project had expanded, thanks to Canada’s 1967 Centennial, into a magnificent edifice. The building of the National Arts Centre had been the right project at the right time for Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, who had wanted something special for Canada’s capital to mark the country’s 100th birthday celebration. In G. Hamilton Southam, the man who was now its first director general, the Arts Centre had the right executive, one with the vision, background, and connections to ensure its creation. But even as this glittering first night unfolded, a new constellation of stars was moving into place in Ottawa—men who would bring new ideas and objectives to the development of Canada’s arts and culture.
After