In December, the Vancouver Art Gallery said it was not going ahead with a planned design for its new home, after construction costs soared by $200-million.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
What a debacle, I muttered to myself. I was passing a large empty block in downtown Vancouver, looking at the signs on the fences: “The Future Home of the Vancouver Art Gallery at the Chan Centre for the Visual Arts.” Here, a self-congratulatory “ground-awakening” ceremony was held in 2023. But the ground remains asleep – just piles of dirt and gravel, hibernating indefinitely.
Over the years, The Globe has reported that the new gallery could open in 2019, 2021, 2023, 2027, 2028.
But the design for the new gallery – introduced by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron in 2015 (yes, 10 years ago), who had been selected (over Canadian firms and others) – is now dead. It was finally pronounced as too expensive – which critics have been saying for years, as various iterations of gallery leaders clung to outdated budget estimates, sometimes preposterously. Expected costs ballooned to $600-million, VAG officials said last year. In December, they acknowledged that they were abandoning the design, and said they would look for a more economical solution.
It is maddening to think of all the time, money and resources that have gone into this over two decades. All that care and attention by gallery staff, local artists, politicians, community members. The hours and hours of meetings, presentations, city council debates, funding announcements. The deadlines that came and went.
In 2014, as she was working on the design, architect Christine Binswanger described the research process to me, which included travels around B.C. to get a sense of the place: Salt Spring Island, Haida Gwaii. What did that cost?
“As an architect, it’s less than 50 per cent of the projects you draw that ever get built; much less, actually,” she said. “Our work is thinking, and then sometimes we can also build.”
The gallery says $60-million has been spent on the project, which has included multiple redesigns. That’s some expensive thinking.
Of course, the money did not just go to the architects. How much has gone toward promoting the gallery that will never be? And all those celebratory events, including the 2019 announcement of $40-million from the Chan family? “It’s a historic day for the gallery,” a jubilant then-VAG director Kathleen Bartels said at the time.
A lot of goodwill has been squandered over these many years. How can anyone – donor Michael Audain aside – still feel optimistic about this? Or trusting enough to donate to a project that has already wasted tens of millions, only to literally be back at the drawing board?
Mr. Audain helped spearhead the campaign early on, but left to build his own art museum in Whistler, which opened in 2016. He returned to the VAG project after Ms. Bartels’s contract was not renewed in 2019.
He had pledged $100-million to the new building, an offer which is off the table for now, as his foundation awaits a new design. “That agreement has lapsed,” he told me this week. His tired voice over the phone from Bangkok reignited my exasperation. How could he not be furious? “Certainly it’s been a significant disappointment that after 20 years, we’re almost back to square one,” he said, calmly. But he stressed that he’s looking forward to the new plan.
Money is power, and Mr. Audain is adamant that the VAG relocate to land first set aside for it by the city in, gulp, 2011. But rumblings are beginning again about expanding on the gallery’s current site instead, a former courthouse redesigned by Arthur Erickson in the 1980s.
Bruno Freschi, who worked with Mr. Erickson on the concept for the project – which included the law courts and a block in between the two sites – told me this week that “Arthur’s genius” allowed for expansion on the middle block, as he anticipated the gallery’s growth.
Mr. Freschi said that, with the failure of the new scheme, expanding onsite should be seriously considered; it would honour Mr. Erickson’s concept, be economically and architecturally feasible, and allow the gallery to remain in the heart of the city. “It’s really irresponsible for the board to go forward without an honest, realistic, in-depth study of how to handle the existing [site],” said Mr. Freschi.
I have supported moving the gallery to the new location. But I also support a building the VAG can actually afford. And transparency is a must, especially for a public gallery whose fate will have huge consequences for the city. When I sent questions about the status of the project to the gallery this week, a spokesperson responded that they look forward to sharing more information in the coming months.
The behind-the-scenes drama of this campaign, which I have not even gotten into here, is worthy of a tell-all book – or a painting. Perhaps a Vancouver artist will create a mural depicting this saga: mysterious, colourful and long. But then, where would it hang?
