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After seven long years, the Vancouver Art Gallery gets the site it wanted for a new building PLUS support from the mayor. But … a few strings attached

April 18th, 2013 · 157 Comments

While all of you have been merrily living your lives, some people in the city have been waiting for months for this city report to come out saying whether the Vancouver Art Gallery would get the Larwill Park site or not.

And the answer yesterday was … yes, sort of. My story here, plus my colleague Marsha Lederman’s here.

City report here.

And, btw, all the background and the prediction of how it would all go down from a couple of months ago in my Vancouver magazine article here.

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  • Bill Lee

    Now we have the VAG’s summer exhibit “Persuasive Visions: 17th Century Dutch and Flemish Masterworks and Contemporary Reflections”
    What is it?
    The June 15th Vancouver Sun says: …”features 36 works by 30 artists. Nearly all of the work comes from the gallery’s permanent collection, although five of paintings have been borrowed from the Rijksmuseum…”

    Oh, that well really draw the tourists in, and waves of locals… NOT.

    Sheesh.

    The BAG is looking for a new place, maybe the VAG can give their ‘esteemed’ collection to that new building.

  • Bill Lee

    COPE’s Tim Louis pokes fun at Vision Vancouver and opposes using city site for new art gallery
    http://www.straight.com/news/394166/copes-tim-louis-pokes-fun-vision-vancouver-and-opposes-using-city-site-new-art-gallery
    by Charlie Smith on Jun 21, 2013 at 2:33 pm The Georgia Straight.

    http://www.straight.com/news/394166/copes-tim-louis-pokes-fun-vision-vancouver-and-opposes-using-city-site-new-art-gallery
    Louis came to speak at the Burgundy Luncheon Club at the Vancouver Terminal Club

    ….”On a more serious note, the former chair of Vancouver’s finance committee said that unlike the two other parties, COPE is opposed to expensive megaprojects.

    That prompted a question about COPE’s position on a proposal for a new $300-million to $350-million art gallery.

    It may be built on a city-owned parking lot—known as Larwill Park—across from the Sandman Hotel on West Georgia Street.

    In April, Green, NPA, and Vision Vancouver councillors all voted in favour of leasing this $200-million property for free to the Vancouver Art Gallery.

    This is provided that the VAG board meets certain conditions, including raising $100 million each from the federal and provincial governments.

    Louis conceded that COPE doesn’t have a position on this issue.

    Speaking personally, he said that he would prefer to monetize the site for affordable housing.

    “I’d love to give $200 million to the art gallery but I think it’s a question of priorities,” Louis commented. “If you asked me to make a very difficult decision—$200 million to the art gallery or $200 million to really address the crisis of homelessness, not by producing shelters but actually affordable housing—I’d give the $200 million to producing housing.”

    Then he added that perhaps this should be put to the voters in a referendum.

    “You’ve got $200 million,” Louis said. “Does it go to the art gallery or does it go to addressing a crisis of homelessness? At the end of the day, life is about choices. You never get to have everything. You have to choose one or the other. So I’m not anti-art gallery. But I don’t know that we should be spending $200 million there.”

  • Bill Lee

    Uh-oh.
    —
    [2]The Seattle Times
    Local News
    [3]Low-graphic news index | [4]Mobile site
    __________________________________________________________________

    Tuesday, June 25, 2013 – Page updated at 02:30 p.m.
    seattletimes.com/text/2021263507.html

    SAM cutting back on hours open, starting July 1
    by Seattle Times staff

    The Seattle Art Museum will be changing its hours on July 1. The new hours will be 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, with hours extended to 9 p.m. on Thursdays. The museum will no longer be open to the public on Tuesdays or on Friday evenings.

    Cara Egan, SAM’s director of marketing and public relations, commented that the new hours will provide savings in operating cost and will also “align with our current visitor patterns.” The hours reduction won’t entail any cuts in staffing or programming.

    “We have been closed on both Mondays and Tuesdays in the past,” she said, adding, “There was not enough attendance on Friday evenings to continue to keep the museum open late. However, visitors are coming to SAM on Thursday evenings and we will continue to offer Remix at SAM downtown three times a year on Friday evenings.”

    For more information about exhibits at SAM, call 206-654-3100 or go to http://www.seattleartmuseum.org.
    ===
    Current VAG hours Daily 10 am to 5 pm
    Tuesdays until 9 pm

  • Bill Lee

    Nice little piece in The Mainlander (“The” is important in looking for web page link ) on the VAG bid.

    …”In the media and fleeting conversations held in bars, cafes and openings, the VAG’s pending move was framed as an emergency situation: if the VAG failed to secure Larwill park, its Director, Kathleen Bartels, would possibly resign; investors might walk away (or in the case of Michael Audain, die off); Bob Rennie, finally, might place a stranglehold over the arts community, securing absolute hegemony. As a result, Vancouver’s artists would be left to drift on the shores of aesthetic negligence and rejection, abandoned, stranded to the summer biennial circuit without a local “world class” museum to call their own. The professional conditions of liberal subjectivity — property, art, consumption and order — were faced off against a pending collapse. Recourse to danger served to close off the discussion. If you are not involved in the promotional discourse of art-writing, criticism was either viewed as politically meddlesome or aesthetically retrograde, or worse, irritating intrusions on the investment cycle.”
    Part I
    http://themainlander.com/2013/07/13/the-vancouver-art-gallery-and-the-eviction-of-a-political-idea-part-i/

  • Bill Lee

    Part 2 just appeared.

    The Vancouver Art Gallery and the Eviction of a Political Idea — PART II
    By Andrew Witt On July 28, 2013 ·

    http://themainlander.com/2013/07/28/the-vancouver-art-gallery-and-the-eviction-of-a-political-idea-part-ii/
    (only 3200 words, 100 paragraphs)

    While over at the Georgia Straight (2000 words, 140 paragraphs)

    Why the B.C. election and a federal cabinet shuffle pose a threat to a new Vancouver Art Gallery. Local politicians must recognize that senior governments are less Vancouvercentric.
    by Charlie Smith on Jul 29, 2013 at 9:43 am
    http://www.straight.com/news/405036/why-bc-election-and-federal-cabinet-shuffle-pose-threat-new-vancouver-art-gallery

  • Bill Lee

    And the Potemkin Art Gallery creaks to life, of a sort as they open bids from Archtects, Starchitects and general street people to show cardboard designs and drawings of castles in their rarifeid air.

    From Vancouver Sun’s Kevin Griffin’s blog: http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2013/09/06/vancouver-art-gallery-architects-start-your-designs/

    Here are the highlights of the 48-page Request for Qualifications:
    *”The new Vancouver Art Gallery should be a building of the highest quality and should be recognized as a great achievement in museum design, reflecting the reputation that Vancouver holds as one of the most impressive centres of contemporary art production in the world,” the RFQ says.
    “It should also be a defining expression of the Gallery’s stellar reputation for the presentation of visual art for the enjoyment and education of local and international audiences.”
    *Architects have to include a comprehensive list of “all major public buildings of $40 million or more completed or commenced since” 2000 plus a list of all museum or comparable cultural or exhibition facilities. It also wants relevant experience in designing “significant sustainable buildings,” such as those that received gold certification from Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, an international rating system for designing and constructing green buildings.
    Firms are also asked s to identify one or more of their signature projects that represents the firm’s highest level of design excellence
    *The total gross building area is planned to be 311,389 square feet – double the size of the current gallery at West Georgia and Hornby.
    *Timeline:
    Master planning and concept design: March to September, 2014
    Design development phase: March to December, 2015
    Construction: March, 2017 to March, 2019

    The VAG’s architect selection committee has 13 members. In addition to director Kathleen Bartels, they are:

    *Bruce Munro Wright, chair, art gallery board of trustees, and chair of the architecture selection committee, managing partner Goodman’s, LLP

    *David Aisenstat, past chair, board of trustees, and CEO Keg Steakhouse

    *Michael Audain, philanthropist, art collector and chair of the Vancouver Art Gallery Foundation, founder and chair of Polygon Homes

    *George Baird, a found principal with Baird Simpson Neuert Architects and former dean of architecture at the University of Toronto

    *Andrew Gruft, retired professor in architecture at the University of B.C.

    *Terry Hui, board trustee and president and CEO of Concord Pacific Developments Inc.

    *Sherry Killam, board trustee, artist and co-founder, French Country Antiques

    *George Killy, chair emeritus, board of trustees, president of Harley Street Holdings

    *Phil Lind, board trustee, vice chair, Rogers Communications

    *Jeff Wall, artist

    *Peeter Wesik, vice chair, board of trustees, and chair, Wesgroup Properties

    *Mirko Zardini, director, Canadian Centre for Architecture

  • Roger Kemble

    What is all this about an RFQ: request for qualifications? Is this a twist on the old RFP: request for for proposals?

    In any event it’s a long cry for the days of good architecture: Toronto City Hall awarded by open competition to Finnish architect Viljo Revell in 1964: arguably still Canada’s finest city hall, if not finest building period! 



    Some of the world’s great buildings started by open competition: Sidney Opera House, Liverpool Cathedral.

    The selection committee’s personnel disturb me: Terry Hui is just another spec builder. Michael Audain is nothing more than a Gerry-builder from the suburbs whose chosen architect is so noncommittal he may not fit the appellation Honey Boo Boo but, nevertheless, is so cool, his head so swollen, he floats inches above the ground oblivious and with absolutely nothing architectural to say, 



    And that is not art! 



    Honey Boo Boo is the over indulged child of a notorious television family of no particular character: obese, bloated, ugly, and self-trivializing!

    That characterizes recent Vancouver architecture to a tee: the proposed Marine Gateway, Oakridge and the completed big W: all bland, obese! 



    I purposely accuse those who have pretensions to build this recent city. They may like to call it architecture but it is not architecture. It is obese, bloated, ugly, and self-trivializing: Honey Boo Boo.

    And that is where the VAG RFQ selection committee is now.

    It needs to be brought down a peg or two with a resounding bump. Go home and find a useful place for yourselves! 



    The sooner the public rises to stop these arrogant self-appointed paper shufflers the sooner real artists, real architects and real builders will be able get on with what they do best: building a real city. 



    In the mean time we are stuck with Honey Boo Boos. 



    PS VPL main branch was selected by a very suspicious (Gordon Campbell) public vote: that is why it is a national joke!

    Published G&M Sept 06.

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