Bob Rennie donates $22.8 million in art to the National Gallery of Canada: 'We want the works to be shown'
June 16, 2025 | In the PressFrom Vancouver Sun (https://vancouversun.com/news/bob-rennie-art-donation-national-gallery-of-canada)
Vancouver real estate marketer Bob Rennie is starting to think about his legacy, and where to place some of the 4,000-plus works in his art collection.
The National Gallery of Canada appears to be at the top of his list. On Monday, the Ottawa institution announced Rennie and his family had donated 61 works to the gallery, valued at $22.8 million.
The trove includes 40 works by the late Vancouver artist Rodney Graham and three works by Ai Weiwei, the outspoken contemporary art superstar from China.
There are also 10 pieces by Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum, a large installation by British artist Yinka Shonibare, and three works by the late American artist Dan Graham, among others.
Rennie has already donated a couple of hundred works to the National Gallery, bringing the total to 260 pieces of art valued at $35 million.
“I’m 69,” said Rennie, a wildly successful real estate marketer and internationally known art collector. “My kids don’t have the capacity to manage this collection, so I want a custodian that is better than me and that is well-funded for conservation, preservation, (and) lending.”
He also notes the National Gallery has a new position designed “to make sure that there’s a lending practice across Canada to major, modest and small museums. We want the works to be shown.”
There may be more art on the way.
“We’re discussing two major Kerry James Marshall works,” he said. “I think (the gallery was) surprised that we might be willing to give them, because they’re extremely valuable.”
That isn’t hype. A Marshall painting sold for $21.1 million US at Sotheby’s auction in 2018.
“It’s very hard for museums to keep up with contemporary market prices,” he said.
To get expensive works, art galleries rely on donations. Rennie said for a collector, donating art is like “you’re marrying off your children.”
“You hope that they’re marrying the right person, and the journey will be protected,” he said. “And that’s been our relationship with the National Gallery. We’ve been (that way) ever since our first donation to them 20 years ago. We’ve been very comfortable.”
Rennie had local shows of his collection for a couple of decades at his own gallery in Chinatown, located at the historic Wing Sang building. Many of the works he has donated were at shows at his gallery, including a Rodney Graham exhibition.
“I wanted to keep (the Graham works) all together, and (thought) the National Gallery would be a really safe place for it,” he said.
A neon globe that was the centrepiece of Mona Hatoum’s show at the Rennie gallery is not going to the National Gallery, however. He donated it to a museum in Venice.
He sold the Wing Sang building to the province in 2022, which converted it into a Chinese Canadian Museum.
Much of his focus now is on lending art from his collection for exhibitions. He currently has 62 artworks on loan around the world, and is lending some Marshall paintings to an exhibition that will open this fall at the Royal Academy in London, England.
His collection is largely focused on what he calls “raising artists’ voices.”
“Social justice is too weak a word. It’s used too often,” he said. “But raising artists’ voices and making sure that topics of our time are raised.”
He has blue-chip international art connections. He is chair of the collections committee at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. After 17 years of association with the Tate Gallery in London, he stepped down as president of the Tate Americas Foundation last November.
He has also been a critic of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s proposal to build a new facility. But he had breakfast on Monday with the two people currently running the VAG, Eva Respini and Sirish Rao, and said he now has “the nicest relationship with the Vancouver Art Gallery that I have had since 2002.”
And he is still collecting. “I’ve acquired 342 works since Jan. 1, 2023.”
