Downtown St. Albert will get a little bit less colourful this year when two large public murals come down.
But those murals aren’t going away. Instead, they’re going into storage at the Hemingway Centre — St. Albert’s storage room for unused public art.
Two billboard-sized murals — Colour Fields II and Healthy Communities — will be be taken down from buildings in downtown St. Albert later this year. The Gazette checked out the Hemingway Centre last month to see what would happen to these artworks afterwards.
The City of St. Albert has about 280 pieces of public art in its collection, most of which is on display, said city public art associate and registrar Andrea Bowes. The rest is stored in the Hemingway Centre’s back rooms. Some works come here because of building renovations. Others need repairs or assessments, or get rotated out to keep things fresh. A few are never meant for public display at all.
Artwork at the Hemingway Centre is handled by trained conservators and stored on shelves, on blocks along walls, or in vertical slots shielded by white curtains, Bowes said. Exceptionally large or durable outdoor works (such as the goose-and-wheat conglomeration in the St. Anne roundabout) would be stored offsite if they were ever taken down. Some are restored or evaluated in-house, while others are sent to offsite specialists.
“You want to keep it in a place where it’s relatively clean and the lights aren’t on all the time,” Bowes said, and preferably where people aren’t going to trip over it.
Canvas paintings are typically stored vertically to avoid stretching the fabric and to prevent penetration by falling objects, Bowes said. Wooden blocks elevate paintings off the floor in case of floods. Sculptures are often braced by gloves or blocks so they don’t roll over.
Not for public viewing
Most stays in the Hemingway Centre are temporary, Bowes explained. The centre is currently host to three pots made by St. Albert artist Elke Blodgett, for example, all of which will return to St. Albert Place later this year once their plinths are repaired. There’s also a table-sized Lewis Lavoie painting leaning against the wall awaiting some restoration work.
Some works are permanent or long-term residents of the centre. The 216 original tiles that make up the Cultivate Life mural were shown publicly in 2012 (the mural at 20 Perron Street is made of photos of these tiles), and might at some point be posted indoors. For now, they wait in a row of white boxes on a shelf in the centre.
Also here are maquettes (scale models made prior to a work’s final production) of the statue of Lois Hole in front of the downtown library, the Fallen Branch bench in the Celebration Garden, and the fish on the wall in the Landrex Water Play Centre. Bowes said these models were never meant for public display and are being kept for historic purposes.
Bowes said Colour Fields II and Healthy Communities will be broken down into their component plywood panels and stored vertically, with each panel wrapped in Ethafoam (a spongy non-reactive plastic) for cushioning.
What happens to them after depends on their assessment, city spokesperson Lindsay Chambers said in an email. If they can be affordably restored, the murals will eventually go up on another city-owned building. If not, they will be sold/given away. The Tribute to the Sisters of Charity Grey Nuns St. Albert mural (which was taken down removed last year) is undergoing a similar process. As assessing and finding places for giant paintings takes time, it’s unclear when the fates of these murals will be decided.
While the Hemingway Centre’s back rooms aren’t open to the public, Bowes said residents can ask about any public art stored in it (or any works removed from display) though Cultural Services at 780-459-1600.
