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LETTER FROM JUNE CALLWOOD
The eleventh annual Art with Heart auction for Casey House Hospice returns to the Art Gallery of Ontario in a year when Monets, Turners and Whistlers were displayed a few steps down the hall in the lofty galleries of that lovely building. We are awe-struck to be in such company, but not embarrassed. The reason the auction has lasted so long, and become the cornerstone event of Hospice fundraising is that the art to be sold on the evening of November 1st is very, very fine, and always has been a collector's dream.
Casey House Hospice has evolved as AIDS care changed in the last decade and the population suffering from HIV became signficantly different - more women, for instance; more homeless people. The major adjustment to these altered circumstances has been Casey House Home Hospice. The need for outreach into the community began in an era when the disease was rampant and progressed with shocking rapidity. The waiting list for
Casey House
beds sometimes extended to as many as forty desperate people, and their condition on admission had deteriorated
significantly. Casey House nurses yearned to be able to care for them in their own settings in order to reduce the suffering, and Home Hospice was born - despite the absence of government support. Fortuitously, Art with Heart followed immediately afterwards, the bright idea of Richard Silver, and remains an essential factor in the maintenance of the home hospice program, which now reaches as many as a hundred people at a time. Over the last decade, Art with Heart has raised almost $2 million for Home Hospice.
The prestige of the auction's location is a big reason for this success. For the fifth year, the setting is very grand: the Art Gallery's gloriously Grecian Walker Court. For this
beneficence
we thank Matthew Teitelbaum, who heads the AGO and for the sixth year has consented to be Honorary Chair of the auction. We also owe much to the quality of the work, which is juried by skilled people and represents artists and dealers of impeccable reputation. Contributors receive some recompense for their donations, which doesn't always happen in a charity auction; we are proud of that.
We are grateful to our sponsors and volunteers, who make it possible for the auction to be a classy event. And as for Darren Alexander and Sharyn Vincent, the brilliant co-chairs of the Art with Heart Committee who are back for a third year of exhausting meetings and considerable joy, we would roll out a red carpet anytime.
All rise. Hats off.
June Callwood
Founder and Honorary Director, Casey House
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