CALGARY—After more than 20 years of filling the +15 Galleries spaces at Arts Commons, five artist-run galleries have announced they will no longer be working with the centre over what they call a lack of transparency and artistic integrity.

The galleries ending their partnerships with Arts Commons are Stride Gallery, Truck Contemporary Art, Marion Nicoll Gallery, Untitled Art Society, and The New Gallery.

“It’s been made quite clear to me through these entire past months ... there are serious concerns that many different community members of ours have that are not being heard,” said Natasha Chaykowski, director of the Untitled Art Society.

“There doesn’t seem to be a serious commitment to be beholden to these concerns and, for me, that’s the kind of baseline of where we have to start to rebuild.”

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The decision follows recent disputes between the arts community and Arts Commons, including the removal of an installation by a trans artist in the +15 space last month, and concerns about a Jordan Peterson lecture hosted in one of Arts Commons venues in July.

Though these issues acted as catalysts, gallery directors say the deep-rooted issue has been a history of a lack of communication and transparency with Arts Commons.

“The most frustrating thing is the lack of communication. Before we all made these permanent decisions and had all these board decisions about it, we kind of tried to get in contact with them, even about the Jordan Peterson thing,” said Conrad Marion, artistic director of Stride Gallery.

“We kind of received a boilerplate PR response every step of the way until it got to a critical point when they realized we were serious.”

In a statement for StarMetro, Jennifer Johnson, director of programming at Arts Commons, said the centre is working with the departed organizations.

“We are saddened to see these galleries exit these spaces, but respect their decision to do so. We at Arts Commons realize there was a misalignment of expectations and communications between our organization and these groups. In future partnerships, we will clarify our own guidelines and expectations.”

Marion said the installation that was taken down by Arts Commons was the last straw for many of the galleries.

Programmed by The New Gallery, Beck Gilmer-Osborne’s A Thousand Cuts was taken down early after Arts Commons said it received complaints about the work.

The installation included a video compilation of clips from popular films and television shows where cisgender actors play trans roles. One of the clips included a brief scene of frontal nudity.

“We are aware that our decision to remove the exhibit led to assumptions about and against Arts Commons regarding artists’ safety and rights,” Johnson said in the statement.

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“We firmly believe that the artwork has value, however, our public pathway was an unsuitable location for the exhibition.”

Johnson said “both parties suggested alternatives, but could not come to a compromise.”

Su Ying Strang, director of The New Gallery, said it provided many alternatives — such as screening the video in the evenings, or posting a link to a website so people could view it online alongside an open letter by the artist in response to the exhibit being censored — but Arts Commons declined.

“The New Gallery really sees these moments of disagreement as an opportunity to come together and better understand root causes of the complaints,” Strang said.

“My experience with Arts Commons is that their response is to shut these responses down as soon as possible.”

Marion said the next step for the five galleries is to figure out alternative exhibit spaces. The Esker Foundation has offered up its window project space for exhibits.

“We’ve maintained a relationship with Arts Commons for so long that this is also maybe a good opportunity for us to maybe expand to different methods of programming,” Marion said.

“What those spaces at Arts Commons represented for us was a space for young and emerging artists. They may not necessarily be at a point in their career where they can have their first non-school exhibition. Trying to maintain an exhibition in that spirit is really important to us.”

Strang said she hopes there will be a future where her gallery and its artists can work with Arts Commons.

“We are entrusted of doing to the best of our abilities and making sure that their artistic integrity, their safety, their rights are not at risk. At this time, we don’t believe that this is possible with Arts Commons,” Strang said.

“I believe this work will take time. Trust has to be rebuilt prior to entering a new partnership.”

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