MOOSE JAW — The Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery hopes a 4.5-per-cent increase in municipal funding next year will help with ongoing operational deficits that have forced the organization to consider cutting programming.
Jennifer McRorie, director/curator of the MJMAG, presented the organization’s 2025 budget request during city council’s recent third-party community group budget meeting.
The arts organization is asking for $155,550 next year, an increase of $6,763 from this year.
In her letter to council, McRorie said the MJMAG has seen significant increases in operational costs that affected this year’s budget and next year’s, which has forced the venue to cut some community programming.
For example, the venue normally has money to present five to six exhibitions in the Norma Lang Gallery, along with new exhibit updates in the museum. However, she noted that the institution barely had the money for three exhibitions, which made it challenging to fill an exhibition space that is 405 square metres (4,500 square feet) with half the usual exhibitions.
The MJMAG’s 2025 financial statement estimates that the venue will have a slight surplus of $8,415, which will go into the equipment reserve.
The operational costs have been affected by an increase of 8.5 per cent in the national rates for artist fees, which the Canadian Artist Representation/Le Front des Artistes Canadiens (CARFAC) sets, she continued. Provincial and federal funders require art galleries and museums to pay these fees, as well as costs for materials, transportation and salaries.
McRorie noted in her letter that it cost $3,500 in 2022 to ship artwork from Ottawa to Moose Jaw, but the cost to return it in 2023 was $9,000. Furthermore, in 2019, material costs for 10 large sheets of matboard cost $520, but that jumped this year to $1,000.
“Although our attendance numbers are back and above pre-pandemic figures, we are still struggling to get our self-generated funds back up to pre-existing levels (as) fundraising has been challenging,” she wrote.
For example, ParkArt had 77 vendors in 2024, which was near the 80 tables in 2019, but attendance was nowhere near the more than 4,500 people who attended five years ago, she continued.
The organization has been looking to address the deficit in self-generated revenues by pursuing sponsorships and donations, her letter said. This includes signing a short-term naming rights agreement with the Kinsmen Club, which will provide $5,000 annually for the next two years for the Kinsmen Learning Centre.
“… and just recently — although it’s not formally announced yet — (the MJMAG signed an agreement) to receive $10,000 per year for three years from a new sponsor,” McRorie said, noting next year’s budget requires $17,000 in sponsorship funding to balance the budget.
McRorie added in her letter that without the city grant, the MJMAG would only have the ability to exhibit artists’ works without pursuing additional programming that contributed to meaningful community experiences with arts and culture.
During her presentation to council, McRorie summarized all the many activities that had occurred at the MJMAG during the past two years. All these events prompted Coun. Heather Eby to say that residents sometimes complain that there’s nothing to do in Moose Jaw when, in actuality, there’s plenty to do.
“And I think people should come sit in the (council) gallery because everything that happens at the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery could fill someone’s schedule pretty easily,” she said.
Meanwhile, Eby said she appreciated receiving a tour of the venue’s art vault last spring during a public art committee meeting.
“I was just amazed that this hidden vault below the building was full of all these amazing pieces of art and artifacts … ,” she remarked, adding the MJMAG is “that much richer” with the vault.
McRorie replied that she received a tour of the entire venue from the former curator when she began working at the MJMAG nine years ago. She also thought the vault was amazing since it was similar to a smaller version of Regina’s MacKenzie Art Gallery, prompting the outgoing curator to say that the same curator designed both venues.
The next council budget meeting is in January.
