Tangled Space: The Vancouver Art Gallery and It’s Courtyards
Tatiana Povoroznyuk
ANTH341: Museums, Heritage, and Memory
Caitlin Gordon-Walker
April 6th, 2020
The Vancouver Art Gallery’s exterior is what a museum “should” look like; a neoclassical monument originally housing a provincial courthouse, pillars and all. The VAG sits in the centre of Vancouver’s downtown core, and is central also to the city’s place in the global art world, both promoting local artists and exhibiting international work for Vancouverites. As discussed by Kristy Robertson, contemporary art occupies a complicated position within Vancouver’s heritage discourse---producing art both characterized by its reflexivity and awareness of social issues whilst funded largely by luxury property developers (2019, 233-34). This phenomenon places art among discourse concerning the right to the city, the notion of urban space as belonging to all citizens rather than for the elite few, as popularized by Herni Lefebvre (1905). Simon Knell recognizes the work of the museum within the context of Vancouver’s social inequity as producing gifts; illusionary comforts that create potentially problematic myths (2016, 211). Knell’s argument points to a distance between Vancouver’s cultural institutions and the communities surrounding them, something illustrated on the plazas and stairs outside the north and south-facing facades of the gallery. These plazas have hosted countless demonstrations, rallies, and protest since the 1960’s, acting as crucial meeting spots for political activists, many of whom are concerned over the right to the city (Keller 2010). The gallery which operates on this site of resistance remains respectfully separated from the political action outside it’s doors, seeking to strike a balance between an art space funded by elite donors and a socially conscious institution which seeks to advocate for anti-colonialism in it’s exhibitionary programs. These elements of real estate, resistance, and corporate ties coalesce into the Vancouver Art Gallery occupying an incredibly complex and nuanced space within Vancouver’s heritage discourse, existing as a site where competing visions of the city’s past, present, and future are fully entangled and yet, at times, strangely separate.
The Vancouver Art gallery is currently housed in the former provincial courthouse, a fact which entangles the institution and the art scene it leads with a heritage of protest and dissent. Built in 1911, the courthouse is one of few early 20th century buildings left in Vancouver, it’s columns, lions, and classic detailing existing in stark contrast to the “City of Glass” which has been built around it (figure 1). Noted by it’s official “statement of significance”, the building is “a symbol of justice”, and it’s past as a courthouse means the building has been tied to protest and activism for decades (Canada’s Historic Places). Past Museum of Vancouver curator Joan Seidl notes that “From the mid-1960’s, [the courthouse] has been identified as the place you go to voice your alternative opinions. It represented the powers at be and the establishment” (Keller 2010). These 1960’s rallies were organized against the Vietnam War, resulting in the city passing an anti-loitering bylaw which resulted in an inverse effect; solidifying the plaza’s and steps on the north and south-facing facades as places of resistance (Keller 2010). It is this symbolism of authority and establishment that the Vancouver Art Gallery inherited when it moved into the building in 1983, the institution becoming a backdrop to innumerable protests and demonstrations since, most of which are entirely disconnected from the gallery itself (figure 2). And yet, it would be wrong to consider the Gallery as separate from the authority that its building lends it. As discussed by Robertson, when put up against Douglas Cameron’s theorization of museums falling under categories of “temples” or “forums”, the VAG’s architecture is that of a temple, a place of authority over transcendental art (2019, 240). Although the institution itself is more a space of contestation and exploration---a forum---the physical imposition of the perfectly ordered neo-classical columns involve the VAG in a heritage of governance, of law and order, of authority over heritage. These connections do not occur on a merely symbolic level, but continue when one considers the operations of the contemporary art world in Vancouver.
The contemporary art scene in Vancouver which the VAG finds itself at the centre of is fully entangled with heritage discourses surrounding the ‘right to the city’ in Vancouver; issues of who the city should be for (Lefebvre 1905). These issues of space; of who is allowed to occupy it and to whom the city is oriented towards has been a contentious topic in Vancouver for decades. A defining factor of Vancouver’s heritage is the tension between two discourses; the outwardly facing, “livable” city of sky-high glass condos and the more so inward heritage of displacement and resistance. As Robertson writes drawing on Jamie Peck, Vancouver has become “an urban spectacle, a glittering skyline, made up of units that as living spaces are out of reach for most residents of the city” (2019, 238). As outlined in Michael Barnholden’s and Nancy Newman’s book on the subject, homelessness is a pervading narrative in the history of Vancouver, starting from the displacement of Indigenous people in the late 1800’s and continuing into present day (2007). Displacement through forces of colonialism and economic downturn results in a rich heritage of resistance. Such narratives exist in histories like Bloody Sunday, the 1938 police brutality enacted on employed men occupying central buildings in Vancouver, including the Art Gallery in it’s former location (Barnholden and Newman 2007, 42). In a contemporary lens, movements such as Occupy Vancouver continue to criticize the neo-liberal conditions and development companies which led to Vancouver becoming one of the most unaffordable cities in the world, the 2010 occupation occurring outside the VAG, no less (Robertson 2019, 243-251).
The contemporary art world is tied up in these tensions in a complex way, as discussed in detail by Robertson. Major real estate developers have become key patrons of art in British Colombia, most notably Bob Rennie of the Living Shangri-La and the Woodwards redevelopment, and Michael Audain of Polygon Homes (Robertson 2019, 239). These individuals have huge influence over art in Vancouver, owning major galleries and often having their collections shown at the VAG. Audain’s name alone is omnipresent within the artistic community, extending to Whistler at his own Audain Art Museum and to UBC’s Vancouver campus at the newly built Audain Art Centre. The implications of this influence on art in Vancouver itself is a contentious issue, with Andrew Witt of The Mainlander criticizing these developers for restricting art production in an aesthetic sense, understanding elite developers as having a hold on cultural production in Vancouver (2013). Although this point may be argued, it is unquestionable that real estate interests are pervasive throughout Vancouver’s art scene and that money holds immense influence in terms of what kind of art is propped up within Vancouver’s creative world. Witt also brings to light how the governing board at the VAG is composed of wealthy British Columbians involved in resource extraction and development, a fact which stays true to this day (Witt 2013). This implicates the Vancouver Art Gallery as tied to the elite, real estate driven, shiny glass city narrative of Vancouver, even as the institution moves towards social justice-oriented programming.
Simon Knell describes a juxtaposition which occurs at museums between “politics of nationhood” and an “internal culture that possesses an idealistic belief in objectivity and neutrality” (2016, 210). Knell goes on to understand the VAG as upholding sanitized understandings of nationhood, but there are also deeply embedded politics of neoliberalism and urban development at play which contribute to hegemonic narratives towards who deserves a right to the city. There is a peculiar relationship between artists, the VAG, and its benefactors outlined by Robertson. Contemporary art is distinctly political and critically self-referential to economic conditions in Vancouver, which leads to these artworks being shown in the VAG or ending up in collections of private philanthropists, many of whom are the developers these artworks are critical of (Robertson 2019, 235). The example of Ken Lum’s installation from Shangri-la to Shangri-la (2010) is brought to light as an example of this (Figure 3). The piece is a reference to the Living Shangri-La in conversation with Vancouver’s rich history of squatting, mirroring historic images of the North Shore mud flats which were burned to the ground by police in 1971. Robertson draws attention to the political efficacy of works like this, which criticize the economic system while existing as a part of it, and hints at the VAG performing a kind of de-politicization to politicized artworks (2019, 234-35). Knell understands these actions---of the Gallery performing illegitimate political critiques---as a giving gifts which will only be unproblematically and gratefully by the public (2016, 211). Although the VAG has no explicit drive in furthering causes of social justice, their programming has been following themes of de-colonization and investigating heritage from a transnational, diasporic perspective in recent years. Knell brings to light the example of Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop, and Aboriginal Culture, a 2012 exhibition which featured Indigenous youth culture in a way that was “oddly family-friendly” for showcasing a culture which “has sought to challenge the orthodoxies of the majority” (2016, 212). These unproblematic gifts please the “audience, funder, gallery, and wider gallery culture” and provide comforting illusions of cohesion between these groups without interrogating issues such as the deeply rooted association between art, the VAG, and developers in Vancouver (Knell 2016, 212).
This contradictory relationship between the exhibitonary programming at the VAG and the elite donors which keep it’s doors open contributes to the art gallery holding a liminal position in discourses concerning the right to the city in Vancouver. This is something which is reinforced by returning to the protests which occur outside the door to the gallery. Although the Art Gallery’s façade is inextricably tied to demonstration and protest, there is absolutely no mention of this inside the walls of the gallery or in any official media released by the institution, despite the often-political slant of the work it collects and exhibits. Robertson understands this silence as downplaying it’s connection to protest, and cites rare instances of the VAG explicitly stating it’s orientation towards political activism. Former director Kathleen Barten is quoted saying “Our position is that the gallery is an apolitical institution that acknowledges and respects different points of view” (Robertson 2019, 224). Barten is relaying a mission statement of the gallery which is usually implied through both it’s affiliation with the powerful elite and the non-potency of some exhibitions seeking to challenge the status quo; the VAG is most interested in acknowledging issues of colonization and the right to the city without truly addressing them. In this sense, the symbolism of authority imparted by the architecture of the former courthouse is recreated in the ties the institution has with hegemonic systems of power; of creating gifts for the public which seek to balance between political efficacy and maintaining a positive relationship with the city’s elite. The demonstrations which occur just outside the Gallery doors seem separate from the institution, but the VAG is much more complex than simply apolitical; it occupies a space of tension between political action and complacence.
In a city where space is so contested, a city built on unceded Indigenous land and defined by astronomical housing prices and displacement, the Art Gallery exists in a complex space within Vancouver’s heritage. As a heritage building, the site symbolises the powers at be the building occupying a key role as the place for dissent which Vancouverites have gathered for decades to make their voices known. As an institution, the Gallery converges and diverges from this culture of political action, often evading association with any political narrative to maintain it’s favourability with donors invested in the development industry. This particular relationship between the heritage of resistance associated with the former courthouse and the tense ideological space occupied by the VAG coalesces as the Gallery prepares to move into a new space. The seemingly endless project for a purpose-built contemporary space for the Gallery which started in the early 2000’s is contentious enough of a topic to warrant a separate essay, and is discussed at length by Robertson (2019, 251-257). However, as the institution prepares to end it’s chapter occupying such a complex site of heritage and contradicting narratives, the Vancouver Art Gallery should be understood as an institution that is nothing but neutral. Instead, it is a site where multitudes of threads from Vancouver’s heritage narratives converge and tangle.
(2123).
Bibliography
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Lefebvre, Henri. Writings on Cities. Edited and translated by Elenore Kofman and Elizabeh Lebas. Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 1996.
Knell, Simon. “The Gift of Historical Consciousness: Museums, Art, and Poverty.” In Museums and the Past: Constructing Historical Consciousness. Edited by Viviane Gosselin and Phaedra Livingstone, 206–222. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016.
Keller, James. “Vancouver Art Gallery expected to continue protest tradition during Olympics.” The Canadian Press, January 7, 2010. Proquest.
Canada’s Historic Places Administered by Parks Canada. “Former Vancouver Law Courts National Historic Site of Canada.” Accessed April 3rd, 2020. https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=7439.
Barnholden, Michael, and Nancy Newman. Street Stories: 100 Years of Homelessness in Vancouver. Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2007.