The Ottawa School of Art offers a full range of specialized art courses for adults, teens and children in drawing, painting, photography, sculpture and ceramics, printmaking, cartooning and more.
We host artist-in-residence workshops, operate an art boutique, curate exhibitions in our downtown and Orléans galleries, host solo and group shows by local and international artists, and run the Lee Matasi Gallery for student showcases as well as a few off-site gallery spaces (Fritzi Gallery at GCTC, Preston Square/Waterford Group and Minto Suite Hotel).
The OSA also offers a three-year fine arts diploma, a one-year portfolio certificate, a not-for-credit arts Fundamentals certificate and a community outreach program.
At a glance:
Year founded: 1879
Total revenue for last fiscal year: $1,851,051
Twitter: @artottawa
Facebook: /ArtOttawa
Instagram: @artottawa
Top funding sources:
Tuition fees: 54.6%
Grants & fundraising: 11.1%
Membership, art sales, retail: 6.7%
Geographic region of focus:
Ottawa, Gatineau and surrounding area; campus in Orléans
How your business can help
Become a Corporate Member
Sponsor a bursary or scholarship to fund an arts award for the Diploma program
Sponsor a community outreach program
Provide sponsorship for the annual charity golf tournament and/or send a team
Bring a group for a corporate team building artistic workshop
Events and fundraising
The 36TH Annual Holiday Art Sale: from November 26 to December 13, 2020, 189 works from 44 local artists were exhibited in OSA’s downtown gallery at 35 George Street.
Holiday Fundraising Art Sale
(Nov 25- Dec 12, 2021): Works by local artists and members of the school are exhibited in our downtown gallery at 35 George St. and available for purchase. Proceeds are split between the artist and the school with funds raised going towards our bursary and outreach programs.
With 35% of the proceeds going towards OSA programming. Thank you to all that made the Holiday Art Sale a success in 2020.
Golf Fore Art!
(Sept 23, 2021): Our 4th Annual Charity Golf Tournament invites teams of four to tee off and compete in 18 holes. Providing our teams with a boxed lunch, dinner, awards ceremony and an opportunity to bid at our silent auction, we offer several sponsorship packages to help make this event happen each year.
Board members and executives
Jeff Stellick
Executive director
Shirley Yik
President, board of directors
Alexia Naidoo
Vice-President
Anne Eschapasse
Former Deputy Director of Exhibitions & Outreach, National Gallery of Canada
OSA Outreach Art Program at Rochester Heights Community House, a partner in our community Outreach Program.
The outreach program is dedicated to removing all economic barriers (no enrolment fees, no art supply costs, art instructor provided and no transportation) as the classes are taught in the neighbourhood at a local community house or community centre. Participants are also given the opportunity to showcase their work in a group exhibition held each year in our downtown gallery.
For students who are unable to afford the full cost of a course, we have a bursary program that, along with funding set aside in the annual budget, is made possible by several named and anonymous donors. The value of each individual bursary given depends on the level of financial assistance indicated on the application form and the availability of funds.
These programs are supported through our fundraising initiatives and donations are also accepted online, by phone, in-person and by post.
In response to the global pandemic, we now offer several online course options, as well as delivering the certificate and diploma programs in an online-and-in-person hybrid format.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
