Category — The Arts

Perhaps the best news for the Vancouver Art Gallery board less than two weeks after the release of its relocation plan is that public opinion is unanimous: no one is opposed to expansion for one of the city’s premier cultural institutions.

But opinions diverge sharply on everything else: the size of expansion required, the best location for that expansion and the future of the existing site at Robson Square. The plan has even been attacked from beyond the grave in a posthumous editorial by Abraham Rogatnick.

Until council receives a staff report on discussions between the city and VAG for its proposed move to Larwill Park, the old bus depot site next to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, I will be doing some careful listening.

One view that has not been previously released, beyond her own e-mail network, is this open letter from long-time city councillor and former VAG member Darlene Marzari, who provides a unique historical perspective on the possibilities for expansion at the current site: [Read more →]

Bright Light installation at the Yue Shan Society in Chinatown: even more beautiful at night.

Fireworks and dragon dancing celebrated the opening of the Bright Light public art installation in the courtyard of the  Yue Shan Society at 39 East Pender today, where just 30 years ago a narrow walkway linked Pender St. to Market Alley.

The installation by a team led by architect Inga Roecker used 800 umbrellas to light up the sky above the courtyard, which is part of 12 installations commissioned by the City of Vancouver’s public art program during the 2010 Games.

The entire project makes for a fascinating walking tour of Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside, all best seen at night.

Dragons dance for the opening of the Yue Shan courtyard.

Harbhajan Mann and the Quantum Bhangra Feb. 27 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre promises a hot Punjabi ending to a Cultural Olympiad that began with the cool Taiwan dance classic Moon Water.

While not the first event of the Cultural Olympiad, Moon Water by Taiwan’s Cloud Garden dance company Feb. 5 was an extraordinary evening, not least because of the quiet pool of water that literally flooded the stage as the hypnotic performance unfolded.

Cultural Olympiad director Robert Kerr said the near sellout crowd at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre made it perhaps the largest-ever single audience for modern dance in the city.

If so, it is a tribute to the Taiwanese company and its community supporters, but also a sign of the transformation the cultural program may be working on Vancouver audiences.

For a few weeks, Vancouver will host a series of world-class events normally available only global cultural capitals.

An example, in complete contrast to the cool yet intense Moon Water, is Quantum Bhangra with Harbhajan Mann, an evening of the world’s top bhangra performers on one stage, that will close out the Games program. It is as big a gift to the city from India as Cloud Gate was from Taiwan. At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Feb. 27, 7 p.m.

The removal of a graffiti-like mural at Main and Cordova was manna from heaven for critics of the city’s 2010 Games bylaws, proof that a widespread crackdown was under way on the right to free speech.

Except that it’s not.

Now the mural’s back up. It looks a little like graffiti, but it’s not. It’s art, it’s free expression. It’s fine.

As you were.