An auction of Canadian contemporary art was expected to raise close to $1 million in Toronto on Tuesday for a specialty hospital that provides care to people living with and at risk of HIV.
Art With Heart, now in its 29th year, drew an estimated 500 people to the Art Gallery of Ontario. The fundraising effort, which is both a silent and live auction, benefits Casey House, which provides a mix of inpatient, outpatient and community-based services downtown.
The auction was held for the first time in person since the COVID-19 pandemic began. It featured about 75 works by Canadian artists. In 2020, it was a virtual fundraising event but not an auction, and in 2021, it was a hybrid event in which packages were sent to participants.
“People are really happy to be back at an art auction, at a party, doing good things for an organization that works really hard to support Torontonians in the city,” Joanne Simons, CEO of Casey House, told CBC Toronto before the event.
During the event, participants looked at the art, then they went upstairs for the auction itself where there were two auctioneers dealing with bids.
Stephen Ranger, one of the auctioneers and a member of the Casey House board of directors, said the event was a small party in its early years but it has grown into a major fundraiser supported by important Canadian artists.
“It’s a thrill to be back at a live auction,” Ranger said on Tuesday. “To be back in person at the AGO, it’s really amazing. It’s a boisterous crowd, lots of drinks, lots of fun, lots of bidding, lots of great art. It’s a lively group.”
Stephen Ranger, one of the auctioneers and a member of the Casey House board of directors, said ‘it’s a thrill to be back at a live auction. To be back in person at the AGO, it’s really amazing.’ (Michael Aitkens/CBC)
Ranger said artists who take part in the auction know their works of art are being appropriately showcased. He added that the philanthropy at the auction has a direct impact on people’s lives.
“People relate to the energy of this event. Certainly, they relate to the cause of Casey House and the work we are doing in our community,” he said.
Artist Bidemi Oloyede, whose work was featured in the auction, said he explores individual identity in his art and photographs “folks in our community as a way to solidify their identity in history.” Photography provides immortality, he added, and his work means he is creating a “massive archive” of photographs of people. He said he participated in the auction in 2019.
“I’m trying to give back to the community and help whoever I can help. And this is one of the best avenues for that,” he said.
Simons said the hospital sees more than 1,000 people, there has been more demand for health care it provides since the pandemic, and people come for a wide variety of services. The hospital recently opened a supervised consumption service for people with addiction issues, and it strives to be inclusive and free of judgment, she said.
“We really try to treat people like humans and not think about their disease as much as who they are as a person and how we can support them,” she said.
On its website, Casey House says: “We are Canada’s first and only hospital for people living with and at risk of HIV, and have a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to health and well-being.
“Building on a legacy of advocacy and social justice, we actively dismantle barriers to care and safe living,” the website says.
“We provide a community and sense of belonging that connects people to care. The humanity of each client is at the heart of everything we do.”
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.
