Just build it — grandly — and the dollars will flow. Thus seems to be the thinking behind the Edifice Complex taking over Toronto, where excitement and controversy swirl around the architectural redesigns of the city's major cultural institutions.
Over on the West Coast, the Vancouver Art Gallery is also planning a major renovation. But the VAG's cautious approach looks more restrained, even, than Frank Gehry's rectilinear awning for the Art Gallery of Ontario. And in light of the recent rumble at the AGO, when superstar philanthropist Joey Tanenbaum protested the superstar architect's "frivolous" transformation, the transparent, widely consultative process favoured in Vancouver might not be a bad way to go.
"The gallery doesn't want to get into this whole notion of celebrity architecture," says director Kathleen Bartels. "We're trying to come up with a solution that fits the ambitions of this city and the gallery. From a design perspective, it has to work as a visual-arts organization."
The VAG's Master Planning Process, which has sputtered on and off for five years, revs into action next month, when the master planning committee will announce which architectural firm it has enlisted to help develop a plan for the kind of building the gallery needs to meet its long-term goals over the next 25 years.
The four shortlisted firms, chosen from 23 teams, are: Alsop Architects/Robbie Young + Wright Architects (Toronto and London); Peter Cardew Architects (Vancouver); Machado and Silvetti Associates (Boston); and Michael Maltzan Architecture (L.A.).
The chosen firm will not be proposing a detailed architectural design. That competition will be dealt with next year. This first phase, which is expected to continue for eight months to a year and cost $400,000, will begin with a thorough inspection of the gallery's programming goals, bursting storage vaults, and the complex web of heritage policies and zoning bylaws. The final document will address the major issue of whether the gallery should expand on its current site in an old downtown courthouse or relocate.
In 1983, the gallery moved into the converted courthouse, on a block bounded by West Georgia, Howe, Hornby and Robson streets. With hotels on every side, the business district two blocks away and pedestrian traffic all around, the gallery couldn't ask for better visibility. "We would love to stay here," says Bartels. "We're fortunate to have such an amazing location."
That said, the neo-classical revival-style building, designed by Francis Rattenbury in 1907, hasn't done much to boost the gallery's identity. "It doesn't speak art gallery," Bartels says of the stone building with its imposing Corinthian columns and sentry lions. "And it doesn't speak contemporary art either. When people come to the city, they say, 'What is this place? Is it a gallery? Is it a court house or some other government building?'."
When Arthur Erickson renovated the building in the early eighties, to the tune of $20.5-million, he closed up all three of the building's grand stairwell entrances in order to create more gallery space. Today, visitors push their way through the throngs of pot smokers and protesters congregating on the steps, only to find the doors locked. The main entrance, under a green canopy on one-way Hornby, could easily be mistaken for a service door.
The interior poses even more problems. The gallery has 40,000 square feet of exhibition space clustered on four floors that spiral around a central rotunda. With no large consecutive galleries on any one floor, major exhibits are spread out through the vertical maze.
The gallery, the fifth largest in the country, has a permanent collection of more than 8,000 works worth $100-million. But right now there isn't enough space to show the permanent collection, which includes extensive holdings of Emily Carr and of conceptual photography.
The storage vault is full to the point that the collection is in danger of being damaged. And the Annex, added on the Hornby Street side in 1912, needs to be upgraded to meet modern seismic standards.
The building has no theatre or large gathering space , and limited room for public programs. It also needs new escalators, elevators and upgrades to the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems.
Any potential on-site expansion will be complicated by the fact that the VAG building, owned by the British Columbia Building Corporation and subleased from the city, is integrated into Arthur Erickson's Robson Square, an urban complex of international architectural significance. The old and new courthouses stand on opposite ends of the outdoor square, structural bookends to the garden of flowers, waterfalls and sloping steps. Any changes must include Erickson's involvement.
"Robson Square is a treasured open space," says Larry Beasley, director of planning for the City of Vancouver. "We would be very worried about someone plopping down another building there."
Although Beasley says neither he nor the city has any strong preferences, he suggests the gallery consider multiple venues. "They might separate the historic from the contemporary collection," he notes.
The upper floors of the Sears building next door are often touted as a potential location for the gallery. Another is the new development out on Great Northern Way, a former industrial space on a 7.6-hectare land package, donated last year by Finning International Inc. for shared use by UBC, Simon Fraser University, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and the B.C. Institute of Technology.
"We're open to the realm of possibilities," Bartels explains. "First and foremost, we want to look at the possibilities here. But that will require flexibility from the city."
This is a critical moment for the gallery. Long plagued by dysfunctional governance and lacklustre leadership, the VAG has found its rhythm under Bartels's leadership. (At the annual general meeting this weekWED, 24th, board chair George Killy reported that 2003 was the 18th consecutive year in which the VAG has had a balanced budget.) Three years after being wooed away from the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A., Bartels has smoothed the ruffled feathers of board members and local arts luminaries, while hammering out a three-year strategic vision that asserts the institution's strong commitment to contemporary art and the goal of launching local talents onto the international stage.
With a curatorial team that includes Daina Augaitis, Bruce Grenville, Ian Thom and Grant Arnold, the gallery has embarked on ambitious touring productions, including this summer's upcoming Baja to Vancouver exhibit, a collaboration with Seattle Art Museum, California College of the Arts in San Francisco and San Diego's Museum of Contemporary Art.
Bartels's energy and vision has impressed investors, not least of which is Toronto's Alan Schwartz, who sold the gallery his coveted international photography collection last year.
"What people don't seem to understand is that I had a million options available to me, many of them better for me [financially] than the Vancouver option," Schwartz says. "I dealt with Vancouver because there's a real sense of where they're going and what they want to accomplish."
While the VAG's vision might be clear to some key stakeholders, others say it's less obvious to the public. "They haven't been out talking to the community at large about what their thrust should be," the city's Beasley says. He is nonetheless encouraged by the process thus far, including the selection-panel committee, a diverse group that includes Bartels, board chairman George Killy, board member Kevin Leslie, senior curator Bruce Grenville, VAG Foundation chair Michael Audain, artist Ken Lum and Canadian Centre for Architecture director Nicholas Oldsberg.
The teams on the shortlist were chosen, in part, because they have experience with public consultations on similar designs. "It will be very important to our process to engage with the public and key stakeholders very early on," Bartels says. "The decisions we make are going to be fundamental to shaping the history of Vancouver."
The gallery's biggest supporter is Jacqueline Longstaffe who, with her late husband Ron, has donated approximately $9-million worth of art over the years. Compare that with the $90-million-plus Joey Tanenbaum has donated to the AGO, or the $70-million philanthropist Ken Thomson is prepared to foot for its redesign, in addition to an art collection estimated to be worth more than $300-million.
Some say the VAG is in an advantageous position by not being tied to the purse strings of its philanthropists. Thanks to the foresight of former director Luke Rombout, who set aside the funds for an art-acquisition endowment from the sale of the gallery's old building, the VAG has approximately $500,000 to spend each year on art.
"That gives them a huge leg up on other galleries in this country," Schwartz says. "When you're reliant on benefactors for art acquisitions, you're reliant on their tastes and quirks." The same might be said for new buildings.
