Bob Rennie’s father drove a beer truck in Vancouver for a dwelling, which can or might not have been a coincidence, given “Robo,” as he was recognized, liked to drink.
The Rennie household dwelling on town’s east facet was a chaotic place for a kid, with an alcoholic beneath the roof and oldsters who fought and made up and fought some extra. To flee, Rennie sought refuge at his aunt and uncle’s place. That they had cash and their
artwork assortment
was of the sort that rich folks purchased at auctions and mentioned at dinner events.
Younger Rennie couldn’t declare to be an artwork aficionado, however Mieko Izumi, the woman he met when he was 10, married at 19 and finally divorced in his mid-30s after he got here out, was an artist and immersed in a scene he discovered irresistible.
For no matter purpose, artwork spoke to Rennie. The message he heard in 1974 whereas in San Francisco was that he wanted to purchase a Norman Rockwell print he was regardless that it price US$375, plus supply to Vancouver, which was greater than the sum of {the teenager}’s financial savings from bussing tables on the Outdated Spaghetti Manufacturing facility, however positively price it.
“Being poor and from the downtown east facet, I noticed that print — a boy and woman on high of the world — as some type of a utopia,” he mentioned.
That print now hangs in a rest room at Rennie’s dwelling on Granville Island, and to say his first buy was adopted by extra can be an understatement. There are 120 or so different artworks displayed round his home and about 3,800 others saved in warehouses throughout town and 102 extra on mortgage to museums and galleries around the globe.
It’s an artwork trove Rennie has selectively begun to unload
whereas donating a bunch extra
, together with 61 items valued at $22 million that he gave to the Nationwide Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.
This was not his first present earmarked for Ottawa. He began donating to the gallery in 2012 and he handed over one other batch of artwork in late November that was valued at about $30 million, bringing his grand complete of presents to roughly $65 million up to now. The plan for subsequent 12 months? Hold giving.
“I would like the perfect custodian on the earth, in order that’s why the Nationwide Gallery is the proper dwelling for this paintings as a result of they’ll preserve, they’ll protect they usually can lend the artwork to different museums and galleries,” he mentioned. “No person, me included, thought 20 years in the past, ‘Gee, how will this artwork stay later?’ They’re simply stunned some nut job collector needed to purchase it again then, proper?”
By age 21, the one-time busboy had turn out to be a
workaholic actual property agent
, who grabbed ahold of Vancouver’s
rental craze
in 1989 and based a number of entities that in the present day run the actual property gamut from advertising to purchasing and promoting.
In a metropolis awash with towers, the Vancouver newspapers topped Rennie the “Rental King,” a label he isn’t all that snug sporting, however it has not damage the underside line. Actual property made him a particularly rich fellow, one who’s cautious of attending funerals and weddings since folks in social settings are likely to know him because the rental man and all they ever wish to speak to him about is actual property.
What he most enjoys discussing is modern artwork and the famend Rennie assortment that he spends about 30 per cent of his working day engaged on. Its now 69-year-old proprietor is fast to say it might not exist with out his chief collaborationist and good friend, Carey Fouks. Nevertheless, because the saying goes, all good issues should come to an finish and he doesn’t wish to burden his grownup kids together with his passion after he’s gone.
Seek advice from Rennie as a “
philanthropist
” in dialog and there’s a good likelihood he may blush. Philanthropist, he mentioned, is a “huge phrase,” and it doesn’t totally replicate what he has been as much as together with his artwork donations.
Across the time he got here to phrases together with his sexuality within the early Nineteen Nineties, a lightbulb switched on in his head. Individuals had been at all times telling him he wanted to personal works by the Group of Seven, Emily Carr and different established Canadian names to be thought-about a critical collector on this nation.
“For some time, I turned hooked on Ken Danby, the Canadian realist — you keep in mind On the Crease — however then on a dime within the late ’80s, early ’90s, I made a decision — and I don’t know, however it may parallel with me popping out — to gather with my coronary heart and my eye and never my ear,” he mentioned.
In different phrases, Rennie resolved to do it his method. His method is
to not view artwork as an funding
or “trophy” to work into dialog throughout cocktail events. As a substitute, he’s drawn to artwork that has a “social message.”
Of the 4,000 items in his assortment, he mentioned 1,200 will be labeled as being “financially robust,” 400 as “amazingly robust” and a couple of,400 are purely for context, which means if push got here to shove and he was compelled to promote these ones, he would take 50 cents on the greenback and be performed with it.
“Ninety-nine per cent of artwork solely sells as soon as,” he mentioned.
It’s the one per cent of artwork that will get folks excited. On that entrance, right here’s a narrative.
As soon as upon a time at a furnishings public sale in California, Rennie got here throughout a portray by Kerry James Marshall referred to as Invisible Man. The title was borrowed from Ralph Ellison’s American novel from the Fifties about white society’s lack of ability to see previous its stereotypes of Blacks. Marshall performed with the theme in his portray, and Rennie was captivated by the work’s highly effective “social message.”
It being the late Nineteen Nineties, he purchased the portray for about US$50,000, and shortly after acquired a name from an incredulous artwork supplier saying he had overpaid for it by a minimum of “double.”
Maybe that was true on the time. Nevertheless, when Rennie bought the portray final 12 months for an undisclosed king’s ransom — Marshall’s works in the present day promote for between $6 million and $20 million — far be it from the rental king to say, “I instructed you so.”
It’s not in regards to the cash, he mentioned, however typically the cash works out within the collector’s favour, and Rennie, by his donations, is actively sharing the bounty.
“These extraordinary presents that Bob Rennie and his household have given to the nation through the years assist our mission to make nice artwork accessible to all Canadians,” Jean-Francois Bélisle, chief government of the Nationwide Gallery of Canada, mentioned.
Rennie’s November present to the gallery is anchored by a pair of Marshall artworks. Wake is each an set up and a piece in progress. On the time of its creation in 2003, it depicted a black crusing ship with 20 medallions strung from the mast. Every medallion was to characterize one of many first 20 slaves to reach in what’s now the US within the 1600s.
Each time the work has been displayed since, Marshall, who’s 69 and African-American, provides one other medallion to it to characterize all of the paths — attorneys, medical doctors, waiters, ballerinas and extra — Black life has sailed in since that ship’s arrival.
“It now has 1,300 medallions on it,” Rennie mentioned. “That narrative — that story of the primary 20 slaves — can’t go away us; it have to be protected, so these works must go to protected locations, and that’s why it’s being given to the Nationwide Gallery.”
His art-filled house is upstairs from the household’s actual property enterprise, which his son Kris is in control of, although Rennie is rarely removed from work. Annually, he’s allotted a $1.5-million finances to purchase artwork and he admits he struggles to stay inside it, though he has slowed down his purchases and on common buys a bit of artwork each different day, and typically for as little as $5.
Whether or not he can stop gathering chilly turkey and stick with the plan of divesting most of his holdings by age 75 stays an open query requiring a “lot of remedy,” he mentioned, however with the Vancouver rental market at a standstill, he has time to work on issues.
Town is in a “tools-down” setting, he mentioned. His actual property enterprise has not made cash in two years and the corporate has been compelled to put off workers. Whereas not a policymaker, Rennie does have some ideas as to how you can reboot the market. On the high of the record can be tying dwelling possession to immigration and focusing on immigrants in areas of want.
For instance, if Canada requires extra medical doctors, then the federal government ought to recruit extra medical doctors, however tie their entry to Canada to the acquisition of a brand new dwelling. You need in? It’s important to purchase in. The hypothetical doctor/purchaser, who then swallows the international dwelling purchaser’s tax and for the subsequent 5 years works and pays taxes in Canada, would beneath Rennie’s imagined plan start to recoup the international purchaser tax beginning 12 months six.
“We have to acknowledge that each Canadian initially got here from some place else and that immigration is important to the nation’s financial progress, however we must be sensible about it,” he mentioned.
The artwork collector began in San Francisco with a boy and a woman on high of the world, however the street has these days wound its strategy to Ottawa to the advantage of a nation, and Rennie shouldn’t be performed but.
“My youngsters can’t run the gathering, I relate it to, if I performed tennis daily — why would I make my youngsters play tennis?” he mentioned. “The artwork we’re freely giving goes to a greater dwelling than mine.”
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