Category — The Arts

At last some non-political news from Florida, where this remarkable illusion of a 3D Lego army, a direct descendant of China’s terra cotta warriors, has been found under the street in Sarasota, the astonishing creation of a Dutch team competing in a street art festival. Beats sand castle contests, in my book.

Did the 2010 Winter Games Cultural Olympiad bring long-term benefits to Vancouver’s arts and culture infrastructure?

The answer is no, according to research conducted by Duncan Low, former executive director of the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. His careful assessment, set out in this paper, was submitted in 2010 as part of his Masters of Arts research in the SFU Urban Studies Program.

Low traces the story of Larwill Park from Olympic live site to empty lot to projected location of a new Vancouver Art Gallery as part of the grand “cultural precinct” study launched by Sam Sullivan’s NPA council. (There is much more, but Larwill Park is a key part of the story.)

The site for millions of dollars of “cultural” investment for the live site next to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Larwill Park now sits empty. Sports legacies, in contrast, are obvious at the Richmond Oval, Hillcrest and elsewhere.

Here’s Low’s provocative and thoughtful conclusion at the end of nearly 100 pages of analysis:

[Read more →]

Emily Carr's War Canoes: are those high rise condo towers on the horizon?

The breathtaking new show at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Shore, Forest and Beyond: Art from the Audain Collection, can be read two ways.

It is both an extraordinary review of BC art from earliest contact to the present, but it’s also a challenge to voters to think about the future of the gallery itself on the eve of a civic election.

The show is a stunning collection of masterworks of BC art. The remarkable First Nations masks, that date from the pre-contact days to the present, are a show in themselves. But they are juxtaposed with work by Emily Carr and E.J. Hughes, as well B.C. Binning and Jack Shadbolt, in ways that force the viewer to think critically about the province’s past and future. (The amazing collection of work by Mexican Modernists like Diego Rivera seems both utterly out of context and a surprisingly good fit. It is, at least, a glimpse into the Audains’ world view.)

Will it incorporate First Nations or exclude them? Will the arts be seen as fundamental to to our future? Or will we remain the resource extraction economy that is so evident in Hughes’ work?

Equally critically, will the gallery expand enough to allow exhibits that could even raise these questions? [Read more →]

Vancouver’s growing collection of neighbourhood murals can now be explored through an online interactive guide that offers four different tours to the dozens of remarkable installations around the city.

The many art works have been created in the community with a three-year, $10 million program that had support both from the federal government and the City of Vancouver. The new website opens the door to an outdoor autumn art experience like no other.