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Vancouver Art Gallery design: Have your say

October 5th, 2015 · 7 Comments

The city architect/planner who used to oversee the big moves and small details of Vancouver’s major buildings — Ralph Segal — weighs in here on the art gallery. I myself am still trying to understand the design (it looks somewhat better seen close up than in Twitter pictures), so I have no strong thoughts. I’m […]

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And the debate over a new Vancouver Art Gallery heats up again

March 26th, 2015 · 11 Comments

This Vancouver Sun story today, saying the VAG is not going to meet its deadline to raise money and never planned to, and this proposal for an art gallery expansion on this existing site arrived in my mailbox this morning.

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The Vision Vancouver annual fundraiser: a precis

December 4th, 2013 · 29 Comments

For those who missed my scintillating tweets on Monday night, when I was at the Vision Vancouver fundraiser at Floata, here’s a recap, plus a bit more about the 650-person event, which included some singing by the Jewish contingent and people imitating salmon swimming upstream at a certain point. Designated talking point of the evening […]

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An idea for an art gallery plaza grows in Brooklyn

March 21st, 2013 · 8 Comments

Frank Ducote spotted this on a recent Brooklyn trip — a plaza so very much like our art gallery — and asked me to use my vast technical skills to post the picture. Oh Lord, here goes. He also wishes to say: A few years ago the Brooklyn Museum undertook a major renovation, including a […]

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Do you want to know what’s going to happen with the Vancouver Art Gallery’s pitch to move to a new site? Read this for some clues

March 14th, 2013 · 115 Comments

When VAG director Kathleen Bartels made her pitch in late January to an international and local panel assessing whether the City of Vancouver should give the gallery the right to build on the last open block in downtown — a piece of city land — I was there. Sort of. (No, not right in the […]

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Art gallery staff question whether finances robust enough for new building

August 19th, 2010 · 12 Comments

(Sorry, late posting on this due to sporadic ability to connect from paradise) A new round of layoffs at the Vancouver Art Gallery has prompted staff and their union rep to speak out even more vocally this past week than the unhappy mutterings I’ve heard for the past few months. As my story says in […]

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Debate over art gallery draws standing-room and thoughtful crowd

May 21st, 2010 · 19 Comments

It was packed last night at the Robson Square Theatre as people came out to hear the debate over whether and where the Vancouver Art Gallery should move to, along with contributing their own opinions. Fourteen people spoke in all. Seven were outright in favour of the gallery moving to a new site, including documentary […]

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Events listing: Debate on Vancouver Art Gallery future

May 16th, 2010 · 11 Comments

A group outside the VAG — UBC, SFU and Architecture Canada — have organized a public debate on where the gallery should go. May 20, 7 p.m., Robson Square Theatre. Be there or be out of the biggest cultural/urban planning/architecture debate this city has seen in decades. VAG.MAY20POSTER

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Cultural precincts: An old idea?

March 21st, 2010 · 44 Comments

No, I’m not in Bologna or Surrey, as some speculated earlier. I’m in Los Angeles as I write, a city I have grown to be fascinated with because of the way it works and doesn’t in various ways. Lots of things to write about, but I’ll start with my visit to the Museum of Contemporary […]

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Art gallery under the gun to get new site and fast, says board

March 10th, 2010 · 59 Comments

The Vancouver Art Gallery’s efforts to move to a new site, with a landmark building double the size of where it is now, are going to be a fascinating show of its own in the next few months. This is one of those epic stories that happen to cities only every so often, as one […]

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