15 responses so far ↓

• 1 PeterG // Sep 10, 2010 at 7:05 am

  Just how much money do these guys need to spend to show their Thomas Kinkade collection.?

• 2 MB // Sep 10, 2010 at 11:51 am

  The one-time cost of a new VAG will be about 10% of the annual subsidy of the private car in the Lower mainland.

  And their collection is orders of magnitude more than one artist.

• 3 MB // Sep 10, 2010 at 12:01 pm

  Or about 14% of the total revenue to the BC government from casinos in 2009/10.

  http://www.eia.gov.bc.ca/gaming/revenue/index.htm

• 4 MB // Sep 10, 2010 at 12:08 pm

  Or about 1,000 acres of road space.

• 5 MB // Sep 10, 2010 at 12:10 pm

  Or the value of two of the three Pacific Cat ferries from the Glen Clark Navy.

• 6 MB // Sep 10, 2010 at 12:13 pm

  Or about a dime per Canadian.

• 7 David Allison // Sep 10, 2010 at 3:22 pm

  Or — and I know it’s been said before — around about the same price as the new convertible trick roof on the stadium. If we cancel the gallery plans we could have another one of those!

• 8 Dan Cooper // Sep 10, 2010 at 6:54 pm

  As long as figures are being bandied, can anyone tell us how the cost of a new gallery compares to this year’s cuts in inflation-adjusted BC school budgets? To the cuts over the last ten years? Or to the amount being saved by eliminating Child in the Home of a Relative grants through MHSD (well, technically replacing it with another program, but one that is essentially useless, and will not be used)?

  I read an interesting discussion somewhere else recently of a fundamental logical error (sadly, I don’t remember its name): comparing the best of one thing to the worst of another. E.g. “art galleries show exceptional art, while fast ferries and stadium roofs are bad! Thus, we must build an art gallery!” However, there are other potential uses for the same money that are not as egregious as those cited (if, indeed, those are egregious).

  That aside, would the public cost of a gallery be reduced, and more funds made available for other projects (valuable or not depending on each person’s views) if the gallery was willing to consider an alternative plan such as sharing the block?

• 9 landlord // Sep 10, 2010 at 11:25 pm

  @ Dan Cooper : “…this year’s cuts in inflation-adjusted BC school budgets? To the cuts over the last ten years?”
  Please. There have never been any cuts to the K-12 budget in BC. Ever. Not once. The education budget has increased every year for the last 50 years. More recently it has grown despite the decrease in the number of students.
  All of that money has gone to compensation to high-seniority teachers, i.e. salaries and benefits. There have never been any cuts to teacher salaries either. Regular increases, regardless of merit, have kept teachers comfortably among the top 10% of Canadian incomes. With 15 weeks off. Producing graduates who can’t spell or write or do sums after 13 years in the system.
  So let’s forget about expensive new taxpayer-funded shrines to elite status symbols like paintings and private pro sports franchises. End all subsidies to the evil automobile and its planet-killing infrastructure. If we must pay the hated HST let’s give all that money to teachers and the NDP MLAs they own.
  Egregious. Spare me.

• 10 Mira // Sep 11, 2010 at 1:11 pm

  landlord,
  What kind of crawler are you? Day or Night? I’m just curious. You don’t close schools and family venues, throw in the HST while you have enough monies to accommodate a gluttonous Olympic party, start building a roof over a dead structure so that some pumped up animals can play ball, and then propose a NEW EMPTY SPACE to be used as ART SPACE. You make me laugh. You need more gallery space move your exhibition to the next Big Empty Space in town, worth 1 billion dollars, the VCC West. But oops, look who’s involved with that project…same people. LOL

• 11 Dan Cooper // Sep 11, 2010 at 2:49 pm

  Well, landlord, you’ve shown me the error of my ways. Special Education, full day kindergarten, and other such mandates are all myths, as is inflation. Every single last dollar put into school budgets over the last fifty years has gone to unearned teacher pay. I’m now solidly with you on this and all your previous posts, and see clearly that government should have no programs other than police, prisons (lots of those), and military forces, and otherwise stay out of the way of bidness and the infallible free hand of the market.

  (More uproarious laughter.)

• 12 Higgins // Sep 11, 2010 at 3:14 pm

  Mira and Dan Cooper.
  Well said. My thoughts exactly.
  As for ‘landlord’, ummm, he must crave a lot after his lost Dickensian world. Stupider a certain group of people becomes easier for him to justify his landlord-ish ‘rent increases’.

• 13 Gassy Jack's Ghost // Sep 12, 2010 at 1:02 pm

  “In fact, city staff thought the best way to get upper-level governments to provide funding was by creating a cultural precinct. That precinct, they wrote, “would provide an attractive vehicle to raise the funds necessary.””

  This is exactly the same argument that suggests to me Ken Dobbel’s Cultural Precinct Plan is shortsighted and a massive waste of potential, and that any attempt to create such a district should be moved East to the natural Cultural Precinct of our city: the Historic Area.

  Leveraging funding across multiple sectors (housing, culture, social, heritage, education, etc.) would not only do wonders to revitalize the Historic Area and provide economic anchors to spur further investments in the area (and reap huge tax benefits for the City where there is currently very little), Vancouver would also end up with a very special and vibrant Cultural District. The current plan of adding yet another monolith in the Larwill Park area will only create more of a dead zone, and a decidedly boring cultural precinct. A real waste of the potential civic benefits that extend far beyond the VAG.

  There are numerous reports that recommend investment in cultural infrastructure in the DES as providing many spin-off benefits, not just arts-related reports, but housing and social services reports as well. It’s not hard to connect the dots if the City took a wider view.

  For example, why not swap Larwill Park land with Concorde’s contentious and massive empty lot on Hastings, a mere half a block away from Woodward’s? In 2006 this would have been inconceivable for the VAG given the stigma of the surrounding neighbourhood at that time. But unless you are willing to admit that Woodwards is a failure and is not pointing the way to a newly revitalized area, this idea deserves some consideration. Five years from now, with the promise of a new VAG on Hastings, who knows how much more this area would improve and how much investment would be spurred in the Historic Area?

  The Cultural Precinct Plan also seeded a National Aboriginal Art Gallery and a Chinese Centre for Culture and Trade, both of which would be much more relevant and beneficial if located in the historic neighbourhoods where these communities have a long history. With the VAG, that’s 3 cultural anchors for a “precinct” that already has far more tangible cultural significance than Larwill Park. The potential is huge.

  While I realize the VAG is considered a “special case” as a civic institution, and their board really has no interest or responsibility beyond improving their own facility, I think its time that the City took a longer view and woke up to the fact that far more long-term benefits (economic, social and cultural) could be realized for Vancouver if they considered the reams of more relevant reports about cultural investment (based on expert advice and extensive consultation, rather than a special interest decree by the Premier’s former right hand man, and the backroom dealings that led to the current plan).

  The VAG could be the gem in the crown of a historically and culturally relevant Cultural District, rather than another monolith in an entrenched dead zone. Wouldn’t that be better for them in the long run, too?

  As other posters suggest, with 1/3 of billion dollars in play, we need to consider more than just the VAG’s narrow interests.

• 14 Bill Lee // Sep 13, 2010 at 4:11 pm

  @Gassy Jack’s Ghost Comment 13

  Uh. Tides. Yes, Canute can bid them back but it is a low point, at sea level, for any hydrants breaks etc.
  I remember the the ‘Old Woodwards’ had to pump out their basement often during tides, which may just have backed up the regular water table.
  I’d like to see the DES be more cultural, though there is an artists and punk invasion into the area. RIP “Smiling Buddha”
  And I’m afraid, despite the Clans ownership of the properties, that Chinatown as a going-business is gone. It is going like the LaGauchetiere Chinatown of Montreal. Redundant, aged, and no services for the Asian market.
  Instead we have bars on Keefer, closed restaurants; and wide swatches of banks, real estate dealers, and bear-paw dealers on Pender.
  Meanwhile the CCC goes from bad to worse and isn’t viable under the present situtation.
  And the city has 5 Chinese areas for retail around the city, and more in Richmond. Why go downtown and have your car vandalized in the parking lots (abig fear that lead to the parking tower on Keefer)
  Culture yes, but accessible and cheap culture. If the VAG was any good, and not just a place (like the Cinematheque) for foreign wandering shows, the provincial government might even subsidize galleries as London does, to cover free admission.

• 15 Gassy Jack's Ghost // Sep 13, 2010 at 11:56 pm

  Bill, I know it’s a pipedream, and the window is rapidly closing on the Historic Area’s cultural/artistic significance and the ability to entrench it. I see a lot of parallels between this area now and Yaletown in the 80s, pre-condo tower mania. Artists lead the way to revitalization, then are unceremoniously turfed out as the neighbourhood finally becomes more attractive to investors. The current mindset in the Historic Area as espoused by everyone from Jim Green to Ray Louie to the DoP is “revitalization can only be achieved through condo towers”, but boy, what a lame and homogenous downtown we will have if “Gastown is the new Yaletown,” as they say.

  The day seems to be approaching when the only ones that can afford to be located west of Main St. will be two inaccessible fortresses, the VAG and Rennie, both barricaded in against the rabble by their own peculiar psychosis. Like Yaletown, the only cheap and accessible culture we can look forward to in the Historic Area then – as the City grinds down innovative spaces like the Chapel, and the rents go up on Artspeak, Interurban, Cachet, et al – is dog culture.

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