[originally posted in French] - A national cultural jewel

La Maison des artistes, a self-managed francophone artist-run centre in Saint-Boniface, is an important venue not only for Manitoba’s French-speaking artists, but also a place of recognition for professional and emerging artists from the Canadian francophonie. I myself had the chance to exhibit in this space as an emerging artist. I’ve seen some of Canada’s most renowned artists, and discovered Franco-Manitoban artists such as Dominique Rey and Anna Binta Diallo, to name but two. The Maison’s centre and gallery is also a pillar for the professionalization of Western Canada’s contemporary art scene. It participates in national initiatives to represent and develop the Franco-Canadian cultural milieu, for example, recently hosting a cohort of Francophone curators through an initiative of the Association des groupes en arts visuels francophones. The space at La Maison is essential to fulfilling this professionalization mandate.

To deprive oneself of a space like La Maison, its experience and its resources, is to deprive all of Western Canada, and Canada by extension, of a resource and an expertise essential to the Franco-Canadian cultural milieu, and to Canada as a whole. It means depriving the city of Winnipeg of a little cultural jewel that will have shaped or left its mark on some of Manitoba’s up-and-coming cultural talent, past and future.