Art gallery brings in ‘agent of change’
Kiendl brings record of success and transformation from Regina, Winnipeg
Anthony Kiendl sees himself as “an agent of change and institutional transformation.”
Under his leadership, attendance at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina increased by almost 40 per cent in the last three years, and earned revenue increased by 247 per cent.
When he was at the Plug-In Gallery in Winnipeg, he led a successful drive to move from a small rental space into a striking new gallery constructed in partnership with the University of Winnipeg.
Now he’s going to apply his skills to the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG), where he has been named the new CEO and director.
Reached in Regina, Kiendl said he hopes to make the VAG “locally beloved and internationally admired.”
“I want to build a foundation on relevance and community engagement, reducing barriers to access and making it more relevant to a broad base — basically all Vancouverites, and the people of British Columbia,” he said.
The 51-year-old was born on Long Island in New York and grew up in Winnipeg, where he got turned on to art at the Plug-In Gallery in high school.
After studying at the School of the Visual Arts in New York, Concordia University in Montreal and the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, he worked at the Mackenzie Art Gallery, the PlugIn Gallery, and the Banff Centre.
His resumé includes curating Vancouver’s Rodney Graham for a biennale in Belgium in 2011. He’s also proud of his work with Indigenous artists at The Mackenzie.
“In recent years we’ve really developed this reputation as a world leader and supporter of contemporary Indigenous art and artists,” he said. “The Mackenzie had the first Indigenous chief curator of a major Canadian gallery back in ’98 with Leon Martin, and in recent years I hired John Hampton, who is a Chickasaw artist, to be head of all curatorial and education programs and director of programs.
I want to build a foundation on relevance and community engagement, reducing barriers ... and making it more relevant to a broad base.
“We’ve built our collection in recent years around that. Given the context and demographics of our community (in Regina) it’s really flourished, there’s been a great response.”
One of the Indigenous artists he’s worked with is Vancouver’s Dana Claxton, who was on the search committee for a new VAG director.
“Anthony stood out because of his impressive expertise in the organizational development of several Canadian institutions,” Claxton said in a VAG news release.
“In addition, his international work with the Tate Modern and the Museum Leadership Institute demonstrates an engagement with global discourses. He has the ability to make an institution relevant in a particular place at a particular
time and is especially cognizant of an art museum’s relationship to power, relevance and diversity.”
One of Kiendl’s priorities will be to push for a new VAG building at Larwill Park. The VAG has been trying to build a new gallery for more than a decade. It has a design by the Swiss firm Herzog & De Meuron, but hasn’t been able to nail down the hundreds of millions in government support necessary to build it.
Kiendl thinks the time might be right.
“I think we’re looking at the possibility of infrastructure funding as a stimulus,” he said. “We’ll be looking to all levels of government and stakeholders and donors, everyone, to realize this dream. It is shovel-ready and a way to get people back to work.
“It’ll contribute to the green economy and following the (economic) recovery will contribute to international tourism, continuing Vancouver’s prominence on the world stage.”