Kelowna Collects

Selected works of art from private collections in Kelowna

January 16 to March 7, 2010

To help Kelowna put on its best face in 2010 when we welcome visitors from around the world who come to the Vancouver Olympics and stay to tour the province, the Kelowna Art Gallery devised this loan exhibition of important works of art in private collections in this city. The gallery has not organized a collectors’ show since our On Loan exhibition of 1996, which was curated by Dagmar Pearson. We are most appreciative to all the collectors who kindly allowed our curator into their homes, and shared their information and stories with Sarah Campbell, our Curatorial Assistant and Registrar, for use in preparing the wall texts. Visitors from here and afar will agree that we have assembled an eclectic and wide-ranging number of works for the show, which will fill both of our indoor exhibition spaces.

At press time we do not yet have the complete list of works that will be exhibited, but some of the variety is already apparent: both two- and three-dimensional works, from cultures such as the Hopi and Innu, foreign countries such as Chile and Japan, and by nineteenth-century academic painters, through the Group of Seven, with even a work by Henri Matisse thrown in. Much of the work is contemporary art and visitors will recognize some famous names: Americans Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and James Rosenquist, for example. Of course there will be many works by Canadian artists, such as Bill Reid, John Hall, Evan Penny, Ron Moppett, Jeff Wall, and Ann Kipling. Some of our city’s collectors are artists themselves, and some of those artists have works in the show, owned by other collectors. If ever there were a must-see exhibition, this one is it, as after its close, all works go back home to their owners, most of whom prefer to remain anonymous for security reasons. The show will be accompanied by a folder-style catalogue with colour images of a sampling of the works of art included.

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