No. 1 Northern

1 Northern is a large public art work in the form of a steel abstract sculpture by John Cullen Nugent, currently standing where it was originally installed in the fore court of the Canadian Grain Commission building in Winnipeg, in 1976.

[1] It was hauled away and cut into pieces on two occasions, before and after being installed in front of another federal government building, and finally reinstalled at its intended location once more in 1997, nearly twenty years after its removal.

In April 1973, Ernest J. Smith, the building's principal architect, met with Regional Committee member Kenneth Lochhead and they "mutually agreed" that the building required a major contemporary work of art for the fore court, determining a budget of $50,000, with Smith to follow up with a list of artists (the Regional Office had not changed its position).

The following July, a competition was proposed between ten invited artists, with each to receive $500 for their maquette (scale model) and travel expenses.

[4] In January 1975, Nugent and four other artists, Henry Saxe, Ulysse Comtois, Ricardo Gomez, and Hugh Leroy, were chosen by Smith (with Kenneth Lochhead's advice).

[4] Earl Baxter, chairman of the Board of Grain Commissioners, attended the meeting at which Nugent's proposal was selected and expressed reservations about its design.

"[6] According to the federal government's Cultural Property Inventory, in addition to complaints from employees and the general public that the work was "ugly and meaningless", there were also "charges that the piece was dangerous in the winter because someone might walk into it and injure themselves.

"[5] Catherine Anderson-Dolcini believes that many people were either unaware of what the work represented, or else resented representation of the wheat in abstract form, and that much anger, stemmed from a lack of public involvement during the selection process.

Mayo Graham of the Public Works Capital Region Advisory Committee felt that "both the sculpture and its location" were fine, but was not happy with what he called the "bus 'hut,' bench, and surrounding planting", as he wrote in a letter to Bob Osler, Acting Chief of Environmental Design, dated 9 August 1977:Frankly, I think that we should care enough about the sculpture to highlight it... rather than try to hide or detract from it with these other unattractive elements.

[6] Canadian Artists Representation filed an action to stop the removal of Nugent's work; the sculptor was given one month to choose between two sites, though he felt that neither one was suitable.

"[5] Late in the night of 31 August,[4][6] against the protestations of Nugent's lawyer, officials dismantled the work[6] (possibly while legal proceedings were ongoing) when it was cut up and taken to a federal warehouse in Lockport.

[12] Another two decades later, Di Brandt, Winnipeg's first poet laureate, suggested that as the Winnipeg Arts Council's contemporary public art program has developed, Nugent's work no longer seems risqué: "It brightens up the grey streets, and provides a nice horizontal homage to our Prairie landscape and agricultural heritage among all those tall vertical buildings.