When Alexandra Badzak was chosen as one of the recipients of this year’s Order of Ottawa awards, she was honoured to be recognized within the city’s arts and culture community.
The City of Ottawa held its Order of Ottawa awards ceremony back in November, which recognizes citizens’ achievements and influence within their community and careers.
As president of the Ottawa Art Gallery for over 14 years, and having led its expansion project back in 2018, it has been “gratifying” for her to know that people saw value in revitalizing cultural infrastructure and programming in the city.
“It was a huge honour. I think there’s perhaps quite not many of us from the arts and culture community that have received this honour, so I do see it as very special,” Badzak recalls.
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Art has been the pinnacle of Badzak’s life, leading her to find joy in connecting ideas and people through it. She graduated with a BFA at the University of Saskatchewan before pursuing a Masters of Continuing Education, where she discovered that she thrived in leadership positions.
Previously, Badzak had worked at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon and later served as Executive Director of the Diefenbunker Museum. When she first joined the OAG team, she was excited for its new opportunities.
“I got very excited about the possibility of taking yet another organization through great change,” Badzak says. “I believe that cultural organizations can’t rest on their laurels, and they really do have to be dynamic and responsive.”
With that mindset, Badzak was put in charge of building a “new home” for the Gallery, which was an eight year long journey for its completion. She talked about the levels of stamina she felt throughout the process, speaking with various groups across the city about the importance of supporting the new revitalization project.
Alexandra Badzak. Photo: Audrey Pridham.
Later, the gallery obtained a Public Private Partnership, which Badzak said was the first visual arts organization in North America to receive one. When designing the new expansion, Badzak said that she wanted to focus on creating a “new trend” of what a gallery could look like when woven with interconnectivity, and have it placed in the heart of the city right next to the Arts Court.
“It was absolutely necessary that Ottawa had a new home for the arts. For years, the National Gallery I think really dominated the art ecology, for obvious reasons. It’s an amazing institution, but there was a great drive from a lot of community leaders and from the arts themselves that Ottawa needed a world class institution to really showcase their talent.”
Badzak wanted to create a space for local artists to showcase their talents in a professional setting. She helped develop many exhibitions at the OAG that showcased the artistry from diverse communities across Canada, such as Wrapped in Culture, a collaboration between Canadian and Australian Indigenous artists, and 83 ‘til infinity, an exhibition in collaboration with Ottawa Black Art Kollective (OBAK) that looked into the craft and history behind hip-hop in the region. These were only some of the groundbreaking shows that interconnected art and cultural backgrounds for Canadians to learn from and reflect on.
She acknowledges that art curatorial practices have had to change over the years, and that it’s important to have conversations with the various communities that make Canada a cultural mosaic. Badzak wants to highlight collaborating with members of communities themselves to help tell their stories. For instance, the Gallery worked with OBAK during the 83 ‘til infinity exhibition to create a curatorial internship program, but before then, had previously collaborated for other mentorship programs and exhibitions.
Rather than exhibiting other’s work and being an expert on its context and history, Badzak wants to amplify their stories by giving the voices behind it a platform.
It’s not that the expertise has gone away, but I think we’ve now flipped it to understand that expertise comes from the communities that we serve.”
Another project that Badzak launched with the The Royal Ottawa Mental Health called Creative Space introduced weekly art-making workshops for its patients. She says art is an important part of both the preventative side of care and wellness, and the therapeutic side. The program later expanded to include more participants from the Ottawa Mission and St. Joe’s, and created a national conversation about art and wellness.
As an advocate for inclusive and accessible spaces, Badzak says she wanted to change the way people view art institutions as being “elitist” to being in service to the community. She says that future art gallery leaders should be “comfortable with change” to make these spaces more opening.
“When I think of what impact that an art gallery can have at a local, regional, [and] global perspective, it very much is about amplifying and changing practices to be inclusive as much as possible. And those practices will have to change.”
Badzak also acknowledges that more work needs to be done to feature more diverse art collections and to include members of all backgrounds in art leadership positions.
“We’re just not seeing that glass ceiling being broken. There’s very few Indigenous, BIPOC and deaf and disabled leaders in art gallery director positions. That’s a big one I think that we’ve got to work on, and we all have a hand to play in that.”
As for advice that she’d give to emerging artists, Badzak says that it’s important to have stamina and believe that your work matters: “Having the perseverance to just keep going and listening to that voice inside that’s driving you to do the work, because that voice is true and it will matter.”
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