2025-2026 Impact Report
Letter from the Executive Director
Dear Friends,
I am honoured to serve as Executive Director at Nanaimo Art Gallery, where we bring people together to share stories, think about big ideas, and to be inspired by art. Visitors often tell us what an artwork or program has meant to them, and we have worked hard to capture those stories through community engagement. Interviews and visitor surveys have informed decisions throughout the Gallery. We improved teen programming, which now includes Teen Art Drop-In, the Youth Art Collective, and the summer Youth Art Immersive. We developed an Indigenous film series, piloted Creative Minds: Artist Meetups, and continued to adapt the 40-year-old Artists in the Schools program.
We are committed to creating a welcoming, accessible experience for all through new branding, better signage and wayfinding, and introductory exhibition videos. Knowing we can’t bring everyone in, we participated in over 35 outreach events, taking art-making to festivals and exhibitions programming into local parks.
We organized four exhibitions this year, sharing work by nine BC artists, four of them from Nanaimo, and one Quebec artist. We are proud to support artists through fees, exhibition opportunities, and production fees for new work. For example, Samuel Roy-Bois’ exhibition, Commercial St., included all new work, responding to the vibrant street where the Gallery is situated, with Roy Bois collaborating with local artists and businesses. Enhancing the exhibition were three walking tours: a Snuneymuxw perspective led by Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun, a historical walking tour and a tour of the recent street improvements.
Through Commercial St., After Wrappers, and League Nanaimo, we asked how we can play together? In After Wrappers, Big Rock Candy Mountain worked with elementary students and made installations exploring design, flavour, and edible objects. For League Nanaimo, Germaine Koh transformed the Gallery into an arena where visitors prototyped games, played with props, competed and collaborated. We closed the year with a new inquiry: how can we live together? Bleached by Sun brought three historical and four contemporary artists into discussion around Nanaimo’s Chinatown and its Chinese Canadian community. People travelled from far to see it and share stories, and many locals learned about the city’s four Chinatowns for the first time.
We are deeply grateful to our donors, corporate sponsors, and all three levels of government, our volunteers, committee members, and Board of Directors for supporting our programming.
My thanks go to my colleagues – a hard-working team, full of passion, rooted in values and driven by big ideas, sharing their best with our community and dreaming of what’s around the corner.
As we close out 2025/26 and move into the Gallery’s 50th anniversary year, I would like to thank all of those who have attended our exhibitions, participated in our Learning & Engagement programs, and purchased beautiful items from The Gallery Store. Thank you for helping to make the gallery a place where we can be creative, think deeply, enjoy beauty, and come together to engage with art and ideas.
With gratitude,
Carolyn Holmes
Executive Director, Nanaimo Art Gallery
Letter from the Board President
Dear Friends of Nanaimo Art Gallery,
Nanaimo Art Gallery is a creative hub, vital to the social and economic vitality of our community — and this year that work reached more than 25,000 people. Behind that number are school groups and tourists visiting the gallery, artists working with children in classrooms, families taking part in outreach events in the park, and curious individuals discovering exhibitions that make them think more deeply about the world. It is an affirming measure of a year, and a good reminder of why this organization matters to Central Vancouver Island.
We began the fiscal year by signing a ten-year Co-Management Agreement with the City of Nanaimo. The City is among our closest partners, and this agreement sets us up for both support and success over the decade ahead. Critically, it is transferable to a new facility — so the stability we have secured travels with us into the Gallery’s next chapter.
Financially, we ended the year with a planned deficit. That was a deliberate choice: we continue to invest in our fund development program, in direct service of our strategic goal to strengthen our organizational capacity and financial sustainability. Building a fundraising program from the ground up is an enormous job, and the early results are already encouraging. This is the kind of investment that does not pay back in a single year — it pays back in the resilience of the organization that our successors will inherit.
Our staff continue to learn and to lead, both in this community and across the country. When we travel to other communities and talk with peers at other galleries, we hear the same thing again and again: praise for the team at Nanaimo Art Gallery and the work they do. That reputation is earned daily, and it belongs to them.
On behalf of the membership, I want to express real gratitude and appreciation for the work of our volunteer Board of Directors. This year the Board strengthened our financial policies, streamlined our processes, and made meaningful progress on governance and on purposeful, skills-based Board recruitment. It is unglamorous work, and it is exactly the work that lets a small organization take on big things with confidence.
And with the Gallery operating well, the Board and a core group of volunteers have been able to turn their attention to a project alongside the day-to-day: preparing for a new Nanaimo Art Gallery.
To our donors, our sponsors, and our funders at all three levels of government — thank you. Your commitment fuels our passion and our hard work, and none of what you have heard tonight happens without it.
Thank you as well to our members, our volunteers, and everyone who walked through our doors this year. We are glad you are with us.
With gratitude,
Barney Ellis-Perry
Board President, Nanaimo Art Gallery
Mission & Vision
We engage and inspire community through art.
Nanaimo Art Gallery is a creative hub for Vancouver Island, where we build relationships, connect communities, and effect change through art.
Click here to learn about our values
Values
We honour the Snuneymuxw people and the territory on which the Gallery operates, carrying ourselves with qwum qwum uy’shqwalawun: operating in the spirit of “good heart, good mind.”
With this intention, Nanaimo Art Gallery’s values are:
● Relevance: our work is grounded in community and place
● Relationships: we believe in building, nurturing and sustaining relationships
● Innovation: we are at the forefront of creativity with quality programs and exhibitions
● Openness: we are a welcoming organization for all
2025-2026 Reports
2025-2026 Audited Financial Statements
Highlights from the Year
Learning & Engagement Programs
2025-2026 Donor List
Our Team
Administrative Team:
- Executive Director: Carolyn Holmes
- Director of Development & Communications: Karen Bannister
- Administrative Coordinator: Aaramë Robillard
- Marketing & Communications Coordinator: Dana Gage
- Visitor and Retail Services Coordinator: Mary Anne Molcan
- Visitor and Retail Services Representatives: Gillian Chandler, Jessie McCoy, Jennifer Pierce
- Curatorial Team:
- Artistic Director & Curator: Jesse Birch
- Gallery Technician: Chris Bentzen
- Curatorial Intern: Christine Battye
- Curatorial Summer Student: Jessie McCoy
- Learning & Engagement Team:
- Director of Learning & Engagement: Aisha Hamis
- Learning & Engagemen Coordinatort: Nic Cooper
- Indigenous Engagement Coordinator: bailey macabre
- Learning & Engagement Facilitators: Grace Comeau, Pete Kytwayhat, Grei Orser, Harmony Riddel
- Art Education Assistants: Stella Barsby and Aia Segal (Summer 2025)
- Community Engagement Assistant: Grei Orser (Summer 2025)
Board of Directors
- Barney Ellis-Perry (President)
- Keith Kerrigan (Vice President)
- Tina He (Treasurer)
- Katie Ganassin
- Christine Johnson
- Cameron Leckenby
- Chris Midgely
- Signy Madden
- Julie Sperber
- Maxwell Stevenson
Volunteers
Ellie Bannister, Violet Barsby, Audrey Boy, Sydney Bryan, Chimera Carew, Helen Cusick, Sophia Gjelsvik, Kuraki Guo, Masoud Jalili, Sophia Lefebvre, Ruby Neumann, Jennifer Pierce, Sairose Rai, Jaime-Brett Sine, Eleanor Voegeli, Lori Wanhill, Lexi Wojcik