[BCMA] CMA Clip Serv: VAG move still undecided

[Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv.]

Dear Colleagues,

Regardless of whether the VAG stays at its current site, or moves to a new building on a new site, there is no doubt that the Gallery outgrew its present building many years ago. I admit to being biased, having done a lot of work on a expansion plan for the Gallery in the late 1990s while I was a staff member. The VAG's need for an expanded facility was clear ten years ago. Now, it is critical.

The VAG is also more than a "city art gallery". It is a gallery of national importance. Some of the exhibitions it organizes and hosts are of international significance. The size and nature of the current building's spaces for people, programs, exhibitions, and works of art are inadequate for an institution of its stature by any objective standard. Whether it should cost $400 million to provide new facilities can be debated, but in my opinion the VAG's need for either an expanded facility on the same site, or for a new building,  is not open to question.

(It is shameful that so many of our museums in galleries in BC are so ill-housed. My own museum in North Vancouver is a case-in-point. We've been working on plans for a new building since 1993!)

Nancy Kirkpatrick, Director
North Vancouver Museum & Archives
e-mail: kirkpatrickn at dnv.org<mailto:kirkpatrickn at dnv.org>


From: bcma-bounces at lists.vvv.com [mailto:bcma-bounces at lists.vvv.com] On Behalf Of Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv.
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 12:45 PM
To: bcma at lists.vvv.com
Subject: Re: [BCMA] CMA Clip Serv: VAG move still undecided

As an occasional visitor to this Mecca from the heartland [read powerless boondocks] it does seem a bit extravagant while most of us are trying to hang in in the present austerity.
2009/12/11 Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv. <bcma at lists.vvv.com<mailto:bcma at lists.vvv.com>>
Holy Marie Antoinette, Batman!

$400 million for a new Vancouver Art Gallery? At a day and age when lowball construction estimates are the norm?

Can't help but recall yesterday's Christie Clark's call-in show with the topic of erecting tent cities for the homeless spread around Vancouver civic parks and the anguish it caused various callers - pro & con. All concerned wanted shelters for the unfortunate, including the Courts which had just ruled the City was not to stand in the way of such actions. Instead, the judge ruled, Council is obligated to find homes at all costs - the Province, too,

So, a city art gallery without much of a worthy permanent collection (save a category or two) aims at a half-billion set of digs while apparently ignoring where or how such money might better be spent. (If homelessness isn't your cause, there are a half dozen other critical issues in the social or environmental realms that can do).

If any holding deserves a new home in the city, its the historically priceless collection of the long-suffering Vancouver Maritime Museum. And be assured a new VMM could be built for less than a fifth of what the VAG is dreaming of.

Dan Gallacher

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