CBU art gallery, Beaton Institute receive funding

‘The gallery and the Beaton are key community assets’

Cape Breton University’s vice-president of finance and operations says an additional provincial grant it will receive for its art gallery and the Beaton Institute is an acknowledgement of the cultural importance of both institutions in Cape Breton.

The province announced recently that it would provide through the Department of Labour and Advanced Education $700,000 annually for the Beaton Institute and the CBU Art Gallery.

Gordon MacInnis said in an interview there had been an ongoing discussion between provincial and CBU officials related to some financial support for the two institutions. He commended staff for their roles in supporting those discussions and for CBU president David Dingwall for ramping up those discussions.

“Essentially the university’s position was that the gallery and the Beaton are key community assets that had been supported directly by the university and, while pleased to be doing that, we felt it was appropriate for the provincial government to recognize the importance of those two cultural assets to our region and to our province,” he said.

The only universities to lose provincial money under a university funding formula change in 2008 were CBU and Acadia. There was some controversy last year when it came to light that Acadia had received $24.8 million in extra funding above and beyond its grant. The documents showed that when the formula was changed in 2008, CBU’s portion of the provincial funding dropped from 6.99 per cent to 5.6 per cent.

Among the scenarios that CBU had put forward to the province was a request for funding directed to the CBU Art Gallery and Beaton Institute. The Beaton Institute maintains many historically significant records of the university and Cape Breton. The gallery is the only full-time public art gallery on the island.

“The CBU art gallery is our Art Galley of Nova Scotia, if you will, for this region —, it’s a tremendous community asset. What is there to say about the Beaton, other than it is Cape Breton’s archive, it plays a very important role in our community,” MacInnis said, adding he believes there’s a parallel between the role the Beaton plays and the work of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia.

The province is in discussions with universities about the next multi-year funding agreement, which is expected to be reached in the spring.