Parks Canada is disposing of Macaulay House in 2025. The sale of the Dawson City property will leave the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (KIAC) without a home for its artist-in-residence program. The residency has operated out of Macaulay since 2001.
“There’s no hard feelings about this,” says Capp Larsen, director of operations at KIAC. Larsen says Parks Canada staff gave KIAC plenty of notice about its plans to sell the property.
Since March of 2023, KIAC has been planning its residencies knowing its lease on the house expires at the end of 2024.
“There’s a character to this building and it’s sad to let it go,” says Annie Maheux, director of development at KIAC. “The future is uncertain.”
The house was originally owned by Dawson City’s first mayor, Henry Macaulay, elected in 1898. It was built in Victoria, B.C. and brought to Dawson in the early 1900s.
It has also been used as office space by the Yukon Gold Corporation, and a home for youth by the Yukon government.
Both Larsen and Maheux sound optimistic about the future of the residency though its budget (which they agree is “patchwork”) is just under $35,000. That includes housing and supporting artists, and paying a part-time coordinator to manage the program.
Larsen says a KIAC committee is looking for alternatives that will allow the residency to continue in 2025.
Larsen says Parks Canada has offered to investigate whether there are any other Parks-owned properties the residency could work with. KIAC is also exploring partnerships with other local organizations, changing the format to allow for project-based residencies, or facilitating exchanges with artist residencies elsewhere in the country.
Maheux says exchanges like this are a possibility because of the residency’s reputation, which she says is huge for one that’s nestled in the far north. That’s why so many Outside arts organizations got in touch when KIAC announced its impending move.
“Many of the artists that come [for the residency] stay in Dawson after that,” says Maheux. “A big part of the creative population are past artists that were either at the art school or the residency.”
She says the residency draws artists from around the globe. This brings a fresh burst of contemporary art to the community and makes Dawson relevant to Canada’s contemporary arts scene.
Per KIAC’s website, past residents include Sobey Art Award nominees, Western Canada Music Award winners and prize-winning filmmakers. Their work appears in permanent collections at the National Gallery of Canada, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Yukon Arts Centre.
Larsen says even artists who aren’t participating in the residency visit Dawson because they’ve heard, from past residents, how incredible the community is.
Case in point—a Dawson resident has offered to match a December fundraising effort up to $10,000.
When the School of Visual Art (SOVA) offered to donate the proceeds of its annual Drawlidays event to KIAC this year (Drawlidays is like a secret Santa where people exchange portraits they’ve made of each other), the unnamed local offered to match it.
That illustrates how important the residency is to Dawson, says Larsen. It breathes creativity into the community.
“It’s a beloved program for everyone who does the residency or interacts with the residents,” says Larsen. “It really adds to the arts fabric of this community.”
Larsen says fundraising ideas are currently aimed at planning ahead for operational costs and rent raises.
“We don’t know where the new location will be, but we can pretty much guarantee that it will cost more than $875 a month,” says Larsen. Parks Canada rented to KIAC at a rate of $875 plus utilities. The rental was part of an informal partnership the two organizations have.
Other components of that partnership, including allowing KIAC to use heritage sites during the Riverside Arts Festival, will continue.
No one from Parks Canada was available to respond to questions about plans for Macaulay House.
Contact Amy Kenny at amy.kenny@yukon-news.com