More space so more art can be displayed
Christina Montgomery
Province
Keith Mitchell, lead preparator of the Vancouver Art Gallery, stands in the bowels of the building next to an artwork by Ken Lum. Photograph by : Arlen Redekop, The Province
The Vancouver Art Gallery is about to unveil a portrait of its future, sketched in bold, optimistic strokes.
The 75-year-old gallery, now overflowing the heritage building between Georgia and Robson it has occupied for 25 years, has launched a public campaign to seal the deal for a new city-owned site at Georgia and Cambie streets and to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars it will need for a gallery rivalling the world’s most memorable and iconic art centres.
The move, in the quiet planning stages since March 2005, would see the gallery relocate into a 30,000-square-metre building that would: n Offer space for some of the permanent collection now in storage.
– Enlarge gallery space for high- profile travelling exhibits where crowds are now forced to line up outside for long periods.
– Improve the highly controlled storage and display environment that the artworks require.
– And expand children’s and community programming and facilities for group bookings.
Touring the gallery’s cramped basement storage room yesterday — where beneath the Georgia Street lawn a large proportion of the centre’s 10,000 artworks are stored — director Kathleen Bartels and relocation committee chairman Michael Audain lamented the gallery’s inability to display more than three per cent of the collection at any given time.
Bartels said the goal would be to create a leading gallery for the Pacific Rim that would focus not only on Pacific art and international works but the many artists born in B.C. who have risen to international fame.
They include photographer Jeff Wall, who this year became the first Canadian artist to be offered a solo exhibit at New York‘s Museum of Modern Art.
© The Vancouver Province 2007
