Legacy: dedications to the next generation

Works from the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board Permanent Loan

The arts and education have long standing ties. By challenging minds in their formative years, encouraged to think abstractly and inspired to seek out altered perspectives, we invest in a vital and innovative future. The Art Gallery of Peterborough was founded upon two strong pillars: contemporary art and arts education. For the past 50 years, we have acted as a connector between artists and audiences, celebrating new ways of thinking, celebrating artistic practice, and opening spaces for conversation and exchange.

Schools, like galleries, are just buildings without the people who animate them. Without the vibrancy of exchange and the hum of creation, they are empty. The Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board has stewarded generations of engaged student bodies, and their legacy resides in our collection storage. Canadian art masterpieces by famed artists were collected through the efforts of past student councils, who, through the 1940s and into the 1960s, purchased one painting yearly. Among the artists represented in their collection, you’ll find members of the Group of Seven, their contemporaries, and André Biéler. These artists also saw the value of the connections between education, art, and legacy. Biéler was an artist, a teacher, and an activist and his work was deeply invested in the next generation. He was the first president of the Federation of Canadian Artists and was instrumental in the foundation of the Canada Council for the Arts.

The investment in a strong and supported next generation is fundamental to our work at the AGP. Our Youth Art Mentorship program offers young artists in their final years of high school the opportunity to work with an artist mentor in the development of their first professional exhibition at a public gallery. Funding for this program was made possible by a grant from the PCVS Legacy Fund within the Community Foundation of Greater Peterborough. This exhibition celebrates the prescient minds of the student councils who collected such wonderful artworks and reminds us all of the importance of intergenerational exchange and investment in the minds of the young.