Proposed buy of buffalo statues for Canalta raises questions from councillors
Two diminutive but proud buffalo statues may soon greet visitors to the Canalta Centre but the purchase presented to a city committee this week raised new questions about past public art purchases.
Specifically, members of the public services committee heard Monday that the more substantial art installation at the major arena — a mural by well-known, local artist James Marshall — was not done strictly in line with the city’s art buying policy.
The city sets aside $100,000 from the budgets of major new public buildings to buy art purchases considered by a group of community members.
This week, the public services committee heard that the final purchases related to the threeyear-old Canalta Centre would be two granite buffalo statues created by a northern Alberta sculptor.
They cost $28,000 in total, which led Coun. Kris Samraj to ask about the difference and why the three-year delay.
“Since we already have a mural, do we need to spend this money?” Samraj asked.
The response from administrators was the Marshall mural in the buildings foyer accounts for the majority of the $100,000. It was ready on opening day of the facility in August 2015, but the News can find no record of a bidding process or discussion of the purchase in open council or committee.
“That decision was not made by the public art committee,” said Wes Bell, a member of that committee, who presented the bison purchase Monday.
Division commissioner Karen Charlton said the mural was discussed internally when the final building design was worked out in 2014.
“This was a decision of the (Event Centre) steering committee and was part of the original construction,” she said.
She additionally tells the News that the mural was a “one off in terms of process” meant to honour the old Medicine Hat Arena and the new beginning of the Canalta Centre.
She said council of the day was fully aware.
The city policy is to reserve one per cent or up to $100,000, whichever is less, of the budget of new public municipal buildings to buy public art.
New buys are put out to tender and proposals are then evaluated by the public art committee, made up of community members, to determine suitability. They make a recommendation to council.
Public art purchases have created some controversy in the past.
In 2012, several city councillors threatened to hold up the purchase of iron-work for the Family Leisure Centre arches when the committee selected a Red Deer gallery to supply prairie scenes cut into steel.
At the time, administrators and other council members argued that the city’s hands were tied by interprovincial trade agreements that require open bids and state no local preference can be made in municipality buying practises.
New art
The two buffalo statues are the creation of Stewart Steinhauer and stand about three feet tall. They will be placed outside the main doors, among landscaped elements this spring.
Public art committee member Wes Bell said the process was protracted because two separate requests for proposals for the remaining $28,000 garnered no appropriate responses. Eventually the members made an inventory of existing art pieces that were being sold and they settled on the Steinhauer works.
“We all interpret art in different ways, but I love them,” said committee chair Coun. Julie Friesen.
The buffalo connects to Medicine Hat’s heritage as a major staple of the prairie economy up to the 20th century. Several buffalo jumps and historic butchery sites are located within city limits. The Saamis legend also describes the Medicine Man’s hat as being fashioned from bison carcass.
Bell said that the works would be the first in the city’s public art collection to be of indigenous artist. Steinhauer lives on the Saddle Lake Cree Nation reserve near Cold Lake.