Curtain to fall on Gagliano’s Luminato legacy
“When you’re engaged and when you give the most as well, that’s when you’re alive,” says Tony Gagliano, who started as co-chair and co-founder of Luminato a decade ago and wound up as solo chair and ultimate boss of the annual Toronto arts festival.
But after shouldering responsibility for 10 editions, Gagliano is finally ready to let go and anoint a successor.
“The vision and the purpose of Luminato was city-building,” he recalled the other day over drinks at the King Edward Hotel, sharing memories and flashing back to how he segued from running a family business to becoming a power broker in the Toronto arts world, even while remaining virtually unknown to the public.
Soon the curtain will fall on Gagliano’s foray into the culture world.
“As our 10th-anniversary festival winds down, my focus will shift to my next important decision regarding Luminato: working closely with the board of directors and CEO Anthony Sargent to appoint a successor to me as board chair,” he said. “The key will be finding and naming the ideal person for the next phase of growth and development for Luminato as it moves into its second decade.
Just when might this change take effect?
“We aren’t working to a specific timeline,” says Gagliano, “but are working to find the right fit.”
Besides his major role at Luminato, Gagliano is a former chair of the Art Gallery of Ontario board. So for several years he was in the unique position of simultaneously chairing two of Toronto’s most prestigious cultural organizations.
The story of how that happened contains some revelations about how success works in Toronto.
Gagliano is the child of Italian immigrants who came to Toronto from Sicily.
Born four years after his parents immigrated, he has six older siblings and three younger ones. And he never went outside Toronto until he was in his mid-20s.
“We all have different strengths and weaknesses,” his parents told him.
A graduate of the business program at Ryerson University, he entered his family’s small printing business, St. Joseph Communications, after working in insurance for a couple of years. At St. Joseph, where he started as an account executive, he was the company’s 11th full-time employee. After four or five years, he became president of the company, then CEO.
On his watch, the company segued from a small family business to a media empire, not only creating marketing campaigns for the clients whose flyers it printed but eventually taking control of major consumer magazines: first Elm Street, then Toronto Life.
At the AGO, Gagliano played a major role in one of Toronto’s most successful fundraising campaigns, which culminated in 2008, with the reopening of the gallery after a high-profile makeover by superstar architect Frank Gehry, with the help of a legacy donation from Ken Thomson.
These days, there’s no question Gagliano’s heart belongs to Luminato.
“We’re a global arts festival, and being risk-takers is part of our DNA. So we wanted to do something totally different for our 10th year. And to put almost the entire festival at the Hearn was a bold, courageous move. The Hearn may be the most challenging building in our country.”
The idea of moving most of the festival’s programs to the decommissioned generating plant came from artistic director Jorn Weisbrodt. It would be an understatement to say that Gagliano and the Luminato board got behind the plan.
“I’ve fallen in love with the Hearn,” he crows. “My heart soars when I’m there. Nobody else would do what we did: bring the city to that building to experience so much programming. It was a bold, daring decision. And revealing this great asset to the city could be one of the most important things to happen recently in Toronto.”
In Gagliano’s mind, revealing the potential of the Hearn is completely in the tradition of what he and David Pecaut started when they cofounded Luminato.
“We knew that when it comes to the Olympics and the World’s Fair, Toronto has to get permission to bid. David and I wanted to start something that this city could own.”
Like the Toronto International Film Festival, the arts festival they envisioned would be a Toronto brand with global name recognition.
Now at 58, Gagliano is finally ready to step back. Mission accomplished. mknelman@thestar.ca