The collector and businessman Bob Rennie has donated 61 works collectively valued at C$22.8m ($16.8m) to the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) in Ottawa. The Vancouver-based philanthropist has topped his own C$13m ($9.6m) donation to the gallery in 2017, in honour of Canada’s 150th anniversary, which until now was the largest private donation ever to the gallery. This latest donation by Rennie, a distinguished patron of the National Gallery of Canada Foundation (the non-profit that supports the gallery), and his family brings the total value of their gifts to the NGC to more than C$35m ($25.7m), comprising more than 260 works donated since 2012.
The new donation was 18 months in the planning, Rennie tells The Art Newspaper, but some of the gifted works by notable Canadian and international artists seem auspiciously timed given the current geopolitical tensions between Canada and the US. The donation of Yinka Shonibare’s The American Library (2018), for instance, offers a boldly colourful rejoinder to US President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Comprised of around 6,000 books of different sizes wrapped in Dutch wax printed cotton, it includes 3,200 books featuring the names of immigrants, or their descendants, who have influenced American culture—including one Donald J. Trump, of Scottish and German heritage. Originally commissioned for the Front Triennial in Cleveland, the sprawling textile work will take on new meaning in its multicultural Canadian home, while protests break out across the US against anti-immigrant raids.
Mona Hatoum, Undercurrent (red), 2008 (detail) Gift of the Rennie Foundation, Vancouver, 2024. © Mona Hatoum, Photo: Jörg von Bruchhausen, Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, Paris
Similarly, works by the British Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum—including pieces she made while a resident at Vancouver’s Western Front many years ago—speak to the current moment as the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza makes her art exceedingly timely. Rennie, who is one of Hatoum’s pre-eminent collectors, is also the biggest collector of the late Vancouver-based artist Rodney Graham and has donated 40 of his works to the NGC.
While Graham’s work—often consisting of irreverent takes on art history—is not part ofwhat Rennie calls his “social justice” collection, it speaks to the internationalism of Canadian art. Graham, who never had a Canadian dealer and was often more celebrated in New York and London than in his home country, is a well-known photo-conceptualist from the Vancouver School.
The works by Graham that Rennie is donating span nearly four decades, ranging from large installations, lightboxes, paintings and rare early works to multiples produced over many years that enhance insights into his oeuvre. Rennie says he hopes the gift will result in national and international tours of Graham’s work. The gifted works also include pieces by Ai Weiwei, Meleko Mokgosi, Toby Ziegler, Allora and Calzadilla, Dan Graham, Gilbert & George and the art collective Tim Rollins and K.O.S.
“We collect artists in their depth. It’s never been my ambition to collect artists in the moment of their career. We don’t collect sensation,” Rennie, who has been collecting since he bought a Norman Rockwell print at age 17 and who credits his partner Carey Fouks as the co-curator of his collection, tells The Art Newspaper. “When you collect artists in depth it forms a sentence. It starts with a capital—the earliest piece—and ends with an exclamation mark. If you start taking pieces out of the sentence it doesn’t make sense. So, our goal is to keep these rooms together and what I require if I’m a good custodian and I’m looking for a better custodian is somebody that can conserve, preserve and also make sure that the works travel. And when you look at the National Gallery’s [producer and senior manager of national outreach] Josée Drouin Brisebois, her curatorial role is to make sure that the artwork travels to smaller venues and cities across Canada. And my promise to artists is their work will always be shown.”
Pieces of Rennie’s 4,000-work collection—like the 40 Graham works now going to the NGC—affirm Canada’s place in the international art world and speak to a nationalist cultural moment. Rennie says the CanadianPrime Minister Mark Carney did a walk-through of the Graham works recently and spoke of “soft power”.
Collector and philanthropist Bob Rennie Courtesy Rennie Museum, Vancouver
Rennie has been a very active collector and philanthropist on both sides of the Canada-US border. “I’ve always been a bridge between America and Canada,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to build bridges through art with other countries.”
His eclectic, international collection includes many American artists. He also serves as the chair of the collector’s committee for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and previously served on the Canadian Committee for American Relations.
Asked why he chose to donate these works to the NGC, he says: “I try and pick places where I can cause change and raise voices.” As a collector dedicated to “protecting the voices of marginalised artists”, he sees national galleries as safe, state-sponsored bets at a time when funding for the arts is limited.
The NGC’s staff, he says, “have a good eye and their heart is in the right place”, noting their early championing of the Indigenous artist Brian Jungen.
For their part, the NGC’s board chair Paul Genest and director and chief executive Jean-François Bélisle said in a joint statement: “Bob Rennie’s extraordinary contribution to the nation supports our mission of making great art accessible to all Canadians, from coast to coast to coast, through partnership and collaboration.”
