For Bruce Head, the underground concourse at Portage and Main was a career-defining development.
The late Winnipeg artist created the massive concrete artwork covering the inner wall of the circular walkway. Now, his widow is worried about the future of the renowned public art piece if the plaza is decommissioned.
“It meant the world to him; it meant a vindication and recognition of his talent, skills and experience as an artist,” says Judy Waytiuk, Head’s partner of 33 years.
“The biggest chunk of his legacy will be literally buried underground.”
RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS
Judy Waytiuk, Bruce Head’s partner of 33 years, is worried about the future of his 127-metre-long sculpture, curved along the concourse below Portage and Main.
In the wake of Mayor Scott Gillingham’s proposal to reopen the city’s iconic intersection and close its underground concourse, Waytiuk has been seeking answers about the fate of the artwork.
The 127-metre-long geometric relief sculpture, entitled The Wall, is the longest in situ art piece in Canada. The installation was poured in place and is attached to the walls of the below-grade structure. Removing it would be a complicated endeavour. However, the closure of the concourse could leave it permanently hidden from public view.
“In an ideal situation, the concourse stays open and the artwork remains where it is; that’s where it was designed for. That’s where it was intended to be. But ideally the concourse stays open not just for that reason,” Waytiuk says.
During the city’s property and development committee meeting Thursday, possible options for salvaging the installation were discussed, including removal and relocation or recreating the piece elsewhere using 3D laser-imaging technology. Further consultation is needed before a decision is made.
Gillingham is open to looking into the issue.
“If (Bruce’s) work is going to be in peril, I would hope that there’s very clear and proper documentation of it, so the work itself and its heritage isn’t lost.”–Judy Waytiuk
“I want to have discussions with our staff, and with the Winnipeg Arts Council as well, and ask what could be done related to that piece of art,” he said during a media scrum.
“If there is a way to save it, I’d be very open to saving it.”
Head was a University of Manitoba art school graduate and longtime CBC graphic designer who rose to national acclaim for his colourful prints and paintings. He died in 2009.
In 1977, he won the commission to create a public art installation for the controversial, yet-to-be-constructed Portage and Main concourse. The project presented “design, engineering, architectural and public relations challenges,” owing to hostility surrounding the intersection’s closure, according to the catalogue for a major retrospective of Head’s career hosted at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
The Wall is made of 52 poured and moulded concrete panels, many of which Head helped manufacture on-site over the course of two years. The work opened the door to new media and led the artist to a 30-year fascination with concrete sculpture work.
RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS FILES
Local artist Bruce Head died in 2009.
“It’s an important piece. It helps define that space. And it was a big piece — big pieces assume an importance and so do works that artists do as part of these public art commissions,” art historian and former Canadian senator Patricia Bovey says of The Wall.
Head’s piece was created at a time when public art was included in the budgets for new public buildings in Winnipeg. The city’s preliminary 2024 budget has completely cut funding for the Winnipeg Arts Council’s public art program.
Bovey has seen other public art pieces covered up or dismantled during redevelopment projects in Winnipeg and elsewhere.
“It’s a loss of the fabric of a community,” she says. “If (Bruce’s) work is going to be in peril, I would hope that there’s very clear and proper documentation of it, so the work itself and its heritage isn’t lost.”
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.
