Each year Oakville Galleries endeavours to bring some of the most innovative contemporary artworks from around the world to local audiences. And each year a handful of those artworks come to call Oakville home for good. Drawing on both our exhibition programming and extended curatorial research, Oakville Galleries has been developing a permanent art collection for the people of this community for several decades. The Galleries' collection, which holds over 1200 works of art in every medium imaginable, is developed in consultation with a committee of local residents. It serves as a visual record of our time, documenting some of the most pressing concerns of our day: among the collection's greatest strengths are artworks that directly address Oakville's history, industry and growth, as well as broader issues of the environment and the changing face of the Canadian landscape.
Art Privé presents us with an opportunity to showcase some of the similarly ambitious collecting efforts happening in our own backyard. Private collections in the Oakville area boast strong holdings in artworks of all stripes, including abstract painting, contemporary photography and historical lithographs. From Marcel Duchamp to Paul-Émile Borduas to Wanda Koop, the artworks on view in this exhibition provide us with a dynamic snapshot of the artistic treasures that populate this community. And while Art Privé may offer only a modest glimpse of the impressive holdings that have been amassed in local collections–we could have filled these galleries several times over–the quality and diversity of what's presented here nevertheless underscores that a passion for art is one of the hallmarks of Oakville, that this is a community alive with the power of art and ideas.
