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.

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:

This is the crux of the Olympic arts and cultural disconnect: that subsidy for the creation of a cultural precinct and the re-housing of the new VAG to meet the demands of an urban tourism destination is considered prudent government policy.

At the same time, the majority of Vancouver’s professional arts and cultural sector endures increasing hardship with budget cuts and recession. In a Vancouver Foundation report “Weathering the Storm,” published in October 2009, Expectations for 2010 stated,” 73% of Arts & Culture organizations expect a decrease in their revenue from government sources, higher than any other sector.”

It is true to say that the millions of Olympic dollars invested may not have ended up in a cultural budget. But it is also true to say that having spent the money on the construction and deconstruction of various buildings on Larwill Park those dollars will never provide an artistic legacy.

The same argument could be made in relation to the temporary installation of the Olympic streetcar in relation to transit legacy.

Given the research question and the data collected it is fair, at this point to say, that there is little evidence in the data to support the premise that hosting a Cultural Olympiad provided Vancouver’s professional arts and cultural sector as a whole with increased national and international profile nor sustained material and financial benefits.

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?

All of these pieces, enough to fill two floors of the current gallery, are from the private collection of Michael Audain and Yoshiko Karasawa. Audain, he founder and chair of Polygon Homes Ltd., is an art gallery patron who has been a driving force behind the VAG’s search for a downtown location to create an iconic new gallery.

Vision Vancouver’s election platform promises significant new creative space in Vancouver. But where does the VAG fit in that new reality?

A lengthy council debate earlier this year opened the door to new options for the VAG, all based on the need for expansion.

The Audain show throws down the gauntlet. The masterpieces in this show give a glimpse of how great a new, expanded gallery could be.

But expansion, despite the VAG’s current $800,000 operating deficit, is a consensus position.

The real question is how to finance that expansion. Can a new gallery project raise the $300 million required for a new building? Should it include condo development? Into the view corridor? Or is there another way?

One vision of the future sees a new gallery at Larwill Park, the old bus depot site, funded by the profits of a condo tower piercing the view cone that crosses that site.

There will be many who oppose that approach. The new VAG show challenges voters to think beyond “forest and shore” to consider the future of the gallery itself.

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.

Tamara Frank installation at West Pender Place

When Dutch artist Tamar Frank turned on her major new light installation at 1409 West Pender in July, early reviews were so positive she declared herself astounded and “almost bashful at the way people are complimenting me on the work.”

Frank is an internationally-recognized artist whose work has been installed in many countries.

But that public acclaim was not forthcoming from some neighbours of four or five condo towers south of the new building just opened by Reliance Properties, which paid $400,000 for the light work as part of the public art program.

By early August, nearby residents were bombarding councillors with angry e-mails, insisting that the illuminated display, that lasted all night, was keeping them awake. In many cases, nearby residents lacked blinds and had the LED display flashing into living rooms and bedrooms.

(I met with some of the affected residents in August and went down at night to see the display for myself. From the street, the lights seem muted, but passersby have a hard time comparing that experience to that of neighbours, who see the building at close quarters from higher floors.)

So far, Frank’s work remains up for all to see, albeit on reduced hours. Take a look.

In fact, the city was striking a blow for the arts and artists by insisting the building not be used as long as very real fire and public safety threats exist. Repeated efforts to get the landlord to upgrade have so far failed.

Mayor Gregor Robertson summed up this situation nicely in this e-mail to those who contacted him:

Thanks for writing about the Red Gate. I want to clarify some misinformation that is out there. The City’s issue is not with the Red Gate, it’s with the building owner. There are serious safety concerns with the building that the owner has not addressed, despite several meetings with city staff.
An inspection in January found a number of issues that need to be addressed to ensure a base level of safety. Key concerns centered on the lack of fire detection and protection systems (alarms and sprinklers), fire extinguishers, exit signage, emergency lighting and the building’s exit stairs.
These are simple – but serious – things that need to be fixed. City staff from our Cultural Services and Downtown Eastside Planning Group as well as the Building Inspection Department have met with the owner several times to discuss these issues, as recently as last week.
If the building owner puts forward an upgrade plan, and demonstrates a commitment to starting it, the City will reconsider the order to vacate. To date, no such plan has been given to the City – despite several attempts by the City to ask for one over the past six months.
What is most frustrating is that the City actually provides money to support building owners and arts groups in these situations. There are programs and grants for groups that operate in the DTES. We have cultural infrastructure grants, which can be spent on upgrades and renovations.
We want the Red Gate to stay open. I’ve said to staff I want to see it stay open. But if the building owner refuses to make basic safety renovations, the City has no choice but to close it.
Thanks for taking the time to write.
Sincerely,

Gregor Robertson

Visions of Mexican Art is a wonderful show. Oddly, however, the only work by Diego Rivera depicts muffled workmen pulled ice blocks out of the Danube, a far cry from his triumphant murals.

Why?

Port CEO Robin Silvester said March 31 that the most likely explanation is more run-off on the Fraser’s vast watershed resulting from the ravages of mountain pine beetle.

(He was addressing a joint gathering March 31 of Metro Vancouver’s Port Committee and the board of Port Metro Vancouver. The two boards, sometimes at odds over taxes but aligned in their determination to protect the economic benefits of the port, were meeting on a sternwheeler cruise of the port’s facilities between New Westminster and Richmond.)

Silvester said the Fraser’s side channels, which are dredged by other organizations, are constantly at risk of silting up because of the increased load.

It was a fascinating insight into the enormous and widespread economic impacts climate change and the pine beetle infestation, a disaster often forgotten by city dwellers.

But the devastation in BC will be the focus of an upcoming global conference in Spain focussed on global disease threats to forests. Wells artist Claire Kujundzic, whose pine beetle work was installed at the Salt Building during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, is preparing a special exhibit for the conference called Cariboo: Message from the Beetle.

You can contribute to Kujundzic’s travel costs and receive an example of her work by donating here.

But as Tom Hawthorne’s profile in today’s Globe points out, the memoir of the people who travelled the line is just one book in a library of Knight’s work Knight work that changed the direction of BC historical research.

Unlike most historians, Knight situated class at the centre of his analysis and saw the actions of working people, like Japanese Canadian fisherman Ryuichi Yoshida, the subject of A Man of Our Times, as the levers of change.

No. 20 Line is one of the easiest reads by a remarkable scholar who considered any praise from establishment forces as a sign he was heading off-course. That certainly was his reaction about 10 years ago when I congratulated him on the widespread praise for a second edition of Indians at Work, another classic that rewrote the BC history of contact between BC’s aboriginal people and successive waves of settlers. The book, as much a polemic against leading historians as it was a new history, was termed “indispensible” by one target of Knight’s criticism, but Knight shrugged off the compliment as an irritating distraction.

Now, whether he likes it or not, the republication of No. 20 Line as part of Vancouver’s 125th birthday celebration, will bring a new round of praise. Knight will just have to suffer through it, his underdog status intact.

Pete McMartin’s column in today’s Sun reports the views of architect Bing Thom, a sceptic about the need for a new building on a new site, who has just led the transformation of a Washington, DC, neighbourhood with the Arena Stage theatre complex. This project encased old buildings in a new one.

In effect, council rebooted a stalled process that has seen the VAG leadership bounced from one option to another for almost five years.

The first paragraph of council’s decision calls for development of a strategy to meet the future needs of the city, including “further refinement of the business case, analysis, peer assessment and feasibility of all options for a possible Gallery expansion or possible relocation.”

Job one is “a comprehensive review of the various options considered for the expansion and relocation which confirm the 688 Cambie site as the best option.” In other words, all the work up to now will be reviewed and assessed.

Much of that work began in 2006 as part of the secretive Cultural Precinct process steered by Ken Dobell, former city manager and former deputy to the Premier. It all went into the ditch in 2008 when Premier Gordon Campbell, a $50 million cheque in hand, decreed that the new gallery should go at the Plaza of Nations site near the newly-roofed BC Place Stadium.

Two years later, that plan was in the ditch as well. Now VAG is back at the drawing board, working at last on a public engagement plan to put all the cards on the table.

The one thing everyone agrees on: the VAG is a crucial cultural institution that needs to grow.