Category — The Arts

The Galleria Italia, the new Dundas St. facade of the Art Gallery of Ontario, designed by Frank Gehry.

A number of Vancouver councillors, in Toronto this week for the annual meeting of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, made a quick pilgrimage to the Art Gallery of Ontario, where a massive expansion project designed by starchitect Frank Gehry was completed in 2008.

Could the AGO project indicate ways to expand the Vancouver Art Gallery on its current site, as some have suggested? It was my first visit to the AGO in many years, and there’s no doubt it’s a spectacular new building, growing organically out of the original gallery in dramatic fashion.

But it seems clear that the key to the AGO expansion was one man: Lord Thomson of Fleet. Gallery after gallery holds the treasures accumulated by the world’s richest pack rat, who never seemed to buy one example of an artist’s work were 12 would do. One room’s walls were covered with empty frames, as if awaiting the proceeds of an uncompleted shopping trip.

The most pleasant find was a retrospective on the impact of Coach House Press on the Toronto art scene. Located in a small print shop in a tiny brick building off Bloor St., CHP provided a focal point for literary and artistic energy that included such luminaries as poet Michael Ondaatje and artist Greg Curnoe. (I briefly studied offset printing there in the 1970s, when photo offset technology was state of the art and the Internet had not been thought of.)

Curnoe, an avid cyclist who died after being hit by a car in 1992, was represented by his recreation of a vintage Zeus 10-speed.

The valiant group of artists who fought to maintain their space at 901 Main — and eventually moved out in the face of continued hostility from their landlord — are inviting the world to see the new space their co-operative has secured at 150 McLean at Powell.

The new studio promises to be a new focus for the East Side Cultural Crawl and next month’s open house will be a unique opportunity to sample the Crawl early.

Observers of the controversy over the Vancouver Art Gallery’s proposed move to Larwill Park, or people with time on their hands — I fall into both categories at the moment — will be interested in this 2006 council report setting the city’s direction for what was grandly called the “Cultural Precinct.”

The report, drafted by former city manager Ken Dobell, set out a work plan to deal with a host of urgent and conflicting city priorities for its cultural infrastructure in the run-up to the 2010 Olympic Games. The basic concept was a new “Cultural Precinct” of a concert hall, a new art gallery and related developments in and around the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, all bundled in a way that would attract provincial and federal funding.

The report endorsed the VAG’s view that it needed to double its size and move to a much larger site.  It proposed that the VAG, a concert hall and federal office towers all be considered for the Larwill Park site. This grand design would be driven forward with hands-on involvement by the province.

In fact, the report contemplated an advisory committee including “the Premier, Minister of Tourism, Sports and the Arts, as well as the Mayor and a City Councillor, be established to meet quarterly, receive progress reports and provide advice on the program.”

There are few clearer examples of how the city became a branch of the Premier’s Office during Sam Sullivan’s term as mayor. [Read more →]

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 →]