John Powell's 50 Most Powerful People in the Art World - Canada gets a whiff of a mention

John Powell, a Jamaican artist, has considerately published his take on who the 50 most powerful people in the art world are. The list was published November 24, 2009, so is quite up to date.

My intention here is not to go into the selections in too great a detail. Suffice it to say that there are dealers, artists, gallery personages, collectors and I believe one or two critics. No bloggers.

For now, I would just like to put down, for the record, the locations of these 50 people:

New York - 22
London - 10
Los Angeles - 5
Paris - 3
Frankfurt - 2
Basel - 1
Philadelphia - 1
San Francisco - 1
Amsterdam - 1
Tokyo - 1
Germany - 1
Washington - 1
Cologne - 1

So, how does Canada "get a whiff" out of this list?

For one, from the ephemeral presence of Glenn D. Lowry, the Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was formerly the director of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, where he oversaw a major expansion.

Could be that some of the others also spent time in Canada or even are Canadian. I do not have that information.

The point of this exercise, though, is simply to get it out in the open, once again, the dire absence of influence that Canada holds in the art world.

Of course, this list is only one artist's opinion, using bios/info obtained from Artnews. The point is it is real, it is out there and, as time goes by, each succeeding list or report of this nature will do nothing but reinforce Canada art's already sadly lacking international profile.