Ground Awakening Ceremony at new Vancouver Art Gallery site marks long-awaited start of construction
With more than $340 million raised of the gallery’s $400-million goal, the building’s estimated completion is now set for 2028
Herzog & de Meuron’s 2021 artistic rendering of the new Vancouver Art Gallery building.
THE VANCOUVER ART GALLERY held a Ground Awakening Ceremony this morning to celebrate the start of site remediation and construction on the Chan Centre for the Visual Arts building that will become the gallery’s new home.
Completion of the building, located in downtown Vancouver at West Georgia and Cambie Streets, is now estimated at 2028 (one year later than the timeline announced last summer, previously reported by Stir).
“As we embark on this journey toward our long-awaited new gallery, we are not just constructing a building,” said Anthony Kiendl, the Vancouver Art Gallery’s CEO and executive director, at the ceremony. “We are building a creative hub, and a crossroads, that supports the work of artists and other cultural practitioners from across British Columbia and beyond.”
The gallery has raised more than $340 million of its $400-million fundraising goal so far, plus a just-announced contribution of $5 million from the Djavad Mowafaghian Foundation. Major individual donations to date include a record-setting $100 million from the Audain Foundation in 2021, and $40 million from the Chan Family Foundation in 2019, after which the new building is named.
Anthony Kiendl at the Ground Awakening Ceremony. Photo by Emily Lyth (Stir)
The City of Vancouver donated the land for the site, valued at $100 million. The provincial government has pitched in a total of $100 million, and the federal government’s contribution of $29.3 million was announced last June by Vancouver Centre MP Hedy Fry.
Several speakers at the ceremony, including Mayor Ken Sim, urged the federal government to commit more money to the project.
“It’s going to generate at least $84 million per year to the local economy,” said Sim of the gallery. “On top of that—make no mistake about it—it’s going to have a huge impact on the city of Vancouver. It’s going to give it even more swagger, and it’s going to plant the seed for future generations. People are going to come here and enjoy the arts, and they’re going to be inspired.”
B.C. Premier David Eby noted that having toured the back rooms of the current gallery himself, it’s clear that the collection is in need of more space.
“Housing, public safety, education, healthcare—that’s the focus of our government,” said Eby. “But any government that is exclusively focused on that service delivery has a blind spot, and is missing a key element that I feel is a responsibility, which is to recognize the full human experience. That includes sport, art, and culture, and also the economic impact that they bring.”
The new building emphasizes the Vancouver Art Gallery’s commitment to centring Indigenous, Asian, and international artists. The building itself is being created in collaboration with several Indigenous art and design consultants, including Debra Sparrow, Chepximiya Siyam’ Janice George, Skwetsimeltxw Willard “Buddy” Joseph, and Angela George.
Clad in an intricate copper veil in the latest renderings from renowned Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, the building’s exterior takes on the appearance of traditional Coast Salish weaving.
Jan Wade at the Ground Awakening Ceremony. Photo by Emily Lyth (Stir)
Among those who spoke at the ceremony was Hamilton-born, Vancouver-based artist Jan Wade, whose body of work Jan Wade: Soul Power was on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery from July 2021 to March 2022.
“I’m going to say this phrase: ‘The first black Vancouver female visual artist to be offered a solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery in their 100-year history’,” shared Wade. The sentence is often used in formal descriptions of the artist. “But although I am honoured and happy to be that woman, I hope that in the future, this phrase, or any such phrase as this, will be a complete anomaly.
“It’s wonderful, the opportunity of having this new building,” she continued. “But the thing that we really have to keep in focus is that it is really, really an opportunity to lift up the cultural, social, and spiritual practice of this whole community, and take it to a new level in which all feel included and welcome.”
Ground awakening ceremonies, different in concept from a typical construction groundbreaking, are performed to honour the land on which a project comes to life. Today’s event, held on the ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəyə̓ m (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, featured Indigenous ceremonial drumming, and song and dance from the family of late Kwakwaka’wakw artist-activist Beau Dick. Seventeen of Dick’s hand-carved wooden masks were recently acquired by the gallery, and will be on display at the new location.
To celebrate the new site’s ground awakening, the Vancouver Art Gallery is offering free admission from 4 pm to 8 pm tonight, September 15, as a bonus Free First Friday Night.
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