The Vancouver Art Gallery hosted a ceremony at the location of its future building in downtown Vancouver on Friday.

It also offered free admission to the public until 8 p.m. at its current location to mark what it called its much anticipated “ground-awakening” day.

Dignitaries spoke of the importance of art and culture to the province, as well as the significance of new designs for the facility that incorporate elements of Coast Salish weaving and other Indigenous artwork.

Shelley Joseph, sister of the late Kwakwaka’wakw artist Beau Dick, said the institution will hold importance for all communities in the province.

“It doesn’t matter the colour of our skin, our background, whether we have money or don’t have money,” Joseph told hundreds attending the event. “There’s nothing more powerful than art that can bring us together in such a visceral way, to elevate us together as human beings.”

The building’s exterior was designed in collaboration with four Indigenous artists: Debra Sparrow of the Musqueam Nation, Angela George of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and Squamish Nation artists Skwetsimeltxw Willard “Buddy” Joseph and Hereditary Chief Chepximiya Siyam’ Janice George.

 

Indigenous dancers take part in a ceremony at future site of Vancouver Art Gallery

 

Family and friends of the renowned late Kwakwaka’wakw artist Beau Dick took part in what the Vancouver Art Gallery called a “ground awakening” ceremony Friday at the site of the gallery’s new building, which will be at a different location than the current 107-year-old facility.

The gallery’s leadership said the new location will finally allow the gallery to expand and host new exhibitions. The 117-year-old former courthouse building currently hosting the institution had grown too small to properly house its collections.

“I cannot reinforce how important this day is for us,” said Vancouver Art Gallery CEO Anthony Kiendl. “A decade of this collective dream is finally here.

“Artists alter our perspectives. Art museums are uniquely equipped to share new knowledge with mass audiences … integral to our survival in the 21st century.”

Kiendl said working with the Indigenous artists to redesign the building’s exterior was a particular honour.

The weaving-inspired surface “embodies a Coast Salish worldview,” he explained, “creating a blanket or veil that will protect the building and its inhabitants and collections.”

The gallery has so far raised 85 per cent of its total fundraising target of $400 million. The 300,000-square-foot building was designed by Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron.

When construction is complete, the institution will move its collections and archives from its current location to the new one several blocks east at 181 West Georgia St. in Larwill Park.

The proposed building will be of wood and glass and will be designed to have outdoor spaces that are sunny in the summer and protected from rain in the winter.

As for the event’s title, organizers called it a “ground awakening” as opposed to the more typical “ground-breaking” ceremony, even though dignitaries symbolically planted shovels into the soil at the site of the art gallery’s future home.

“We’re really grateful to be invited to celebrate this huge moment — the ground awakening,” Shelley Joseph said. “We believe this is our mother … so we’re not “breaking” our mother, we’re “awakening” the space that’s going to hold these stories, visions and relationship-building events that are going to happen in this building.”

B.C. Premier David Eby was among those wielding a symbolic Vancouver Art Gallery shovel on Friday.

“The art gallery is outgrowing its space,” he explained. “This new building, this amazing new art gallery — that incorporates Indigenous art and culture, that reflects the best of who we are as a province — is going to create so much opportunity for us to truly shine on the world stage.”

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