The Alliance is made up of national service associations in the visual arts (NASOs) who, in advance of each meeting, produce and share a brief update to bring everyone up to speed. These insightful briefs allow us to identify shared concerns and better understand our respective missions and challenges. Informative and demystifying, posting them to the new VAAAV website is a first step in introducing the Alliance to anyone who has a stake in empowering the visual arts through greater synergy.

In fall 2009, Dr. Guy Bellavance of INRS was mandated to undertake a critical review of existing literature on the visual arts in Canada. The results of this exhaustive study were published in winter 2011. Dr. Bellavance’s work should enable us to identify gaps in existing research on the visual arts, and find solutions to address these.

Organized by the Visual Arts Alliance, the colloquium on the future of the visual arts in Canada was organized to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the 1941 Kingston Conference, leading to the creation of the Massey-Lévesque Commission on the Arts in Canada, and to the eventual founding of the Canada Council for the Arts.