Despite its chronic financial struggles, Art Gallery of Algoma has no plan for unloading its huge collection of animation cels, valued in 2009 at $11 million

Art Gallery of Algoma is paying $700 a month to store hundreds of boxes of vintage animation cels, even though the massive collection is rarely exhibited and has little to do with the gallery's formal mandate.

Estimated eight years ago to be worth $11 million, the 600-box collection is being kept in conditions that gallery director Jasmina Jovanovic admits do not meet museological standards set by the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board, the independent tribunal that rules on whether cultural property is of outstanding significance and national importance.

"I'm not saying that they're not worth anything or that they're not good," Jovanovic tells SooToday. "However, this gallery, as is, does not have resources nor the space to care for it properly." At a City Council budget meeting last night, Jovanovic and her board chair Mark Lepore found themselves under strong pressure from Ward 1 Councillor Steve Butland to sell off the collection to help resolve the gallery's chronic financial pressures. Animation cels (originally called celluloids) are transparent sheets on which characters were painted by small armies of artists to make old-school hand-drawn cartoons. The cels were placed over painted backgrounds and photographed, one sheet at a time, using a movie camera. Celluloid was eventually replaced by less-flammable cellulose nitrate, then by polyester. By the early 1980s, the era of hand-painted cartoons had started giving way to the computer-based production methods used today. A considerable market then developed for original production cels, which can sell for thousands of dollars each for major Disney animated features. The Art Gallery of Algoma's collection was received piecemeal, with acquisitions starting in 1998 through the spring of 2011. It includes original production cels from animated television series including the popular Canadian production The Raccoons, which aired from 1985 to 1992 with three television specials and one direct-to-video special. Also in local storage are the cancelled-after-one-season Super Dave: Daredevil for Hire (1992-1993) and the short-lived Festival of Family Classics series (1972-1973). In addition to cels, the Art Gallery of Algoma collection includes storyboards, background paintings and other production material. In 2004, a feasibility study was done for a proposed national animation centre to be built either next door to the gallery or at the Gateway site. Councillor Butland was a proponent of the initiative in those days. But last night, 13 years later on Devil's Night, Butland had turned into a spooky detractor of the animation venture. "What are we going to do with these cels? Is there anything in the plan?" Butland demanded.