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Abstract
The Canada Council marks its fiftieth anniversary in 2007. The third national arts council to be established after the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1946, it was created on the recommendation of a Royal Commission chaired by Vincent Massey, a Canadian philanthropist and diplomat. While it differed from the ACGB in its early scope and organization, it was and is an arm’s‐length body. Using unpublished and published sources, I track Massey’s social contacts during his tenure as High Commissioner to London from 1935 to 1946, where he served on the war‐time boards of the National Gallery and the Tate. This work put him in social contact with Samuel Courtauld, J. M. Keynes, and Kenneth Clark, who were engaged in the governance of British national arts organizations. My findings illustrate the influence that friendships and social networks played in arts policy formulation in these early years of the arts council model.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks to Oliver Bennett at the University of Warwick, Craufurd Goodwin at Duke University, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. I express my appreciation to the Master and Fellows of Massey College, University of Toronto, for permission to quote unpublished material from Vincent Massey’s diary. My thanks also to Canadian friends Donna Zapf, Shivaun Berg, Ariana Bradford, Joyce Bryant, and Meriel and Jim Bradford for their kindness and assistance to me with my Canadian research.
Notes
1. The Arts Council of Ireland was established in 1951.
2. The Queen is the formal head of state in Canada; the Governor‐General is her official representative, nominated by the Prime Minister, and appointed by the Crown. It is a very visible, ceremonial, position.
3. Colony to Nation is the title of a popular history of Canada written by A. R. M. Lower.
4. Paul Litt (Citation1992) is a well‐researched study of the process.
5. American mass culture was then understood to comprise periodicals and magazines, Hollywood feature films, and commercial radio, in these days before having a television was a common household experience.
6. Karen Finlay, in her Citation2004 study, also reaches this conclusion. I have relied on her study, but looked more closely at Massey’s relationships while in London from 1943 to 1946.
7. The company continues to operate today as Massey Ferguson, an international producer and distributor of agricultural machinery.
8. See Finlay’s (Citation2004) study for a detailed discussion of Massey’s relationships with Canadian painters.
9. For Massey’s view on this, see Massey (Citation1963, p. 227).
10. Conveniently for researchers, Massey had his diaries from these years typed, presumably for his reference in writing his memoir. His secretary from his years as Governor‐General confirmed to me that he would not have typed them himself.
11. Space prohibits my contextualizing the social and political circumstances in Great Britain in the 1930s and 1940s. Good sources for this are: Janet Minihan (Citation1977, pp. 172–249); Richard Witts (Citation1998, pp. 9–153); and Robert Hutchison (Citation1982).
12. “L.” is Massey’s shorthand for Lal, his nickname for his wife, Alice (Bissell Citation1986, p. 4).
13. Vincent Massey Personal Records, University of Toronto Archives, B87‐0082, Box 313. Courtesy Master and Fellows of Massey College.
14. Administration by the Royal Academy of the Chantrey Bequest, which was then the sole source of acquisition funds for the collections at the Tate Gallery, had been a subject of controversy since 1904, when a Parliamentary committee looked into its practice of purchasing paintings by Royal Academy members for the national collections. The committee recommended new procedures, but left the Royal Academy in charge of the Bequest (Upchurch Citation2004, p. 207).
15. The bill resolving the Tate’s status was not passed in Parliament until 1954 (Finlay Citation2004, p. 181).
16. US foundations were funding sources for cultural activities in Great Britain before and during the Second World War; The Pilgrim Trust, a US‐sponsored foundation, was the initial funding source for CEMA, the precursor to the ACGB (Witts Citation1998, p. 72).
17. According to Tippett (Citation1990), 150 artists, critics, curators, and educators attended the conference.
18. Massey is referring to André Siegfried, a French sociologist whose study, Canada: An International Power, was first published in 1937 and clearly influenced Massey’s thinking as a cultural nationalist.
19. Finlay (Citation2004) characterizes Massey’s speaking tour and publication of his book as a “personal campaign” for national arts support.
20. Litt (Citation1992) provides an extensive discussion of the political and jurisdictional issues raised by Quebec about the Commission.
21. Maurice Duplessis was premier of Quebec at that time.
22. Proposals for community arts centers also circulated in Great Britain after the war.