by Robin Tarnowetzki
Journal Staff Writer
The Humboldt Gallery has only been open for about nine months, but museum director Jennifer Hoesgen is happy with and encouraged by the support and reaction it has gotten from the people of Humboldt.
"Our opening was in January, so it's freezing cold," she said. "It was a Friday night in January and people are busy, and I was hoping for 50, 100 people. You could not have squeezed another body into the main floor space. A lot of people were just so excited and somebody said to me 'don't tell me Humboldt didn't need an art gallery in the downtown.'"
The building began as a bank until 1989, when the City turned it into a German-themed tourism space called the Wilkommen Centre. The museum took ownership in about 2011, and since then, nothing in the building has stayed the same.
"For two years we completely gutted and renovated every single space on the main floor and the second floor to make it into a community art gallery," Hoesgen said. "I think there's not one spot in the building on the two main floors that hasn't changed People are really surprised when they come into the gallery now, because it doesn't look anything like how it used to."
The gallery has been a bit of a learning experience for Hoesgen - whose background is in anthropology - and staff and volunteers with the museum. When the gallery first started booking artists, staff asked around to get advice from other art galleries in Saskatchewan, like the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon. From there, they developed submission guidelines and started booking artists - the first four will be shown at the gallery into 2015. So far all the artists are local artists, and the shows have featured paintings, sculpture, metal, and ceramics, with a fabric show coming up in the fall. Hoesgen also wants to feature youth at the gallery, which has featured shows from high school students.
"We've tried to make sure it's a wide range we think it's important for everyone to see all kinds of media that way," Hoesgen said.
There are a few things that Hoesgen and the rest of the staff realized after the gallery was open that wasn't immediately apparent in the planning stages.
"We were so focused on getting it open in January; that Jan. 10 date was the Holy Grail and then in the next weeks we had shows booked, but we didn't really know how to operate a gallery."
Some things she learned was that in addition to having space to display art from professional artists, she thinks it's important to have a space to create. One room on the second floor is used for art classes with Annah Gullacher, while another is used for people to create art on their own.
"We were so focused on having spaces for the exhibits that we realized very quickly we also needed to have space for the people to do art," she said.
Other organizations rent the space, so Hoesgen and staff had to figure out everything that goes along with renting out the space. Things are gradually getting smoother, and the gallery has events booked into mid-2016.
The main fear Hoesgen had about the gallery was that no one would use it. She said that her main hope for the gallery was that it would serve the community, but that obviously wouldn't matter if no one used it. Luckily, her fears were unfounded.
"We had so many volunteers that put in so much time and effort into opening the gallery that it would be a real shame if it wasn't well-used," she said. "Then all those efforts are wasted. But that's one of the exciting things; people have been really surprised by the gallery We want people to come in and be surprised at the gallery and experience something that is maybe unexpected."
Upcoming plans for the gallery include the Festival of Wreaths in December, a fall fashion show, and culture days at the end of September. They're also looking for funding to find out what the community wants from the gallery.
"We really want to see if people want to do different stuff," Hoesgen said. "We really want this to be a community-run space."
Hoesgen is also now happy that she can take a step back and admire all the work that went into the gallery.
"When you're in it every day, you forget," she said. "I'm looking at a thing in the wall that I need to fix, not the beauty of the space all the time, so to hear people come in and say 'Wow, what a great space!' is really validating for the people who contributed so much to getting it off the ground."
