Penticton gallery faces backlash after donated art ends up at Value Village

Penticton gallery faces backlash after donated art ends up at Value Village

Artist whose work was donated describes situation as 'wrong' and 'insulting'

When Penticton artist Norberto Rodriguez de la Vega found out that art he had donated to the Penticton Art Gallery was being sold at a local thrift store, he was shocked.

“The whole thing, to me, is insulting,” he said.

His friend went to recover one of his pieces at Value Village, and found it sitting on the shelf of Value Village, priced at $11.

“That doesn’t even cover the cost of materials, this is wrong,” Rodriguez de la Vega said.

He is just one of many artists and community members crying foul over the gallery’s decision to discard art pieces donated by artists for fundraising purposes.

The Penticton Art Gallery says it made an error in its decision to drop off dozens of local art pieces at Value Village.

“We came across hundreds of works of art that we could not account for, and by that I mean they did not have any documentation with them and they were not stored in a way that meets museum standards,” said Penticton Art Gallery board president Leslie Whatmough.

Whatmough said the gallery was put in a challenging spot — they didn't know who received tax receipts for their donations.

“You can’t give the art back to the person who has donated the art if you have given them a tax receipt because that is considered tax fraud,” Whatmough told CBC's Daybreak South.

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She said holding a fundraiser featuring the work would require additional space and time from staff, but she didn’t think it would bring in much revenue for the gallery.

Many in the local art community have expressed anger over the gallery’s actions.

Former Penticton Art Gallery curator Paul Crawford, who is currently embroiled in a lawsuit claiming wrongful dismissal from the gallery, said there was a lack of transparency, and that this move will impact not only the gallery itself moving forward, but other arts organizations as well.

Crawford said many of the discarded works of art were not just from Penticton artists, but from known artists throughout B.C and the country.

“These are not artists that did not have some significant role in the art history or the cultural history of our country, these are notable people.” he said.

The discarded pieces included work from artists Helen May Duke, Sophie Atkinson and William Alexander.

“He was the guy that taught Bob Ross everything he knows and handed the brush over to him,” Crawford said.

The art gallery said they are working to rebuild trust with the community, and they hope people understand that care for art "extends beyond words."

"When you take art in, it has to be done responsibly, you have to say I have the space and I have the resources to deal with this effectively, and the situation we inherited was not that," Whatmough said.

She added the gallery still has dozens of pieces to go through and are opening it up to suggestions as to how to best handle the magnitude of art work.

“We would love to do it better,” Whatmough said.

Tiffany Goodwein is an award-winning journalist with CBC British Columbia who covers Penticton and the south Okanagan region. She previously spent six years reporting in Alberta and is happy to be back home in B.C., where she grew up. You can contact her at tiffany.goodwein@cbc.ca