B.C. government pledges $50-million to Vancouver Art Gallery

Open this photo in gallery:

British Columbia’s NDP government is promising to give the Vancouver Art Gallery $50-million toward its new building.

The commitment means the VAG has now raised about $320-million of the $400-million needed to complete the project, which is slated to open in downtown Vancouver in 2027. It raises the province’s commitment to $100-million after a $50-million pledge made in 2008 by the Liberal government of then-premier Gordon Campbell.

The new building, a project that had remained hypothetical for more than a decade, was given a jump start last year when B.C. philanthropist and art collector Michael Audain and his wife Yoshi Karasawa promised $100-million through the Audain Foundation, the largest-ever cash donation to a public art gallery in Canada. Previously, the Chan Family Foundation had pledged $40-million in 2019, and the building will be named the Chan Centre for the Visual Arts.

Meanwhile, the federal government has yet to come in as a major partner but in June it pledged $25-million from a green infrastructure fund (recognizing the building’s sustainability plan), as well as $4.3-million from a fund for cultural spaces.

The VAG had hoped to break ground this fall and open in 2025, but it is still working on getting permits and detailed drawings for the new building. It now hopes to start construction in 2023 and open in 2027. The building will be erected on a site donated by the City of Vancouver and located at Cambie and Beatty Streets in Yaletown, south of the gallery’s current building in Robson Square. (The site, which the city promised to donate in 2011, is valued at more than $100-million.)

A tower clad in a copper weave inspired by Indigenous basketry and intended to reflect a Coast Salish world view, the proposed building will include artists’ studios and accommodation, a daycare and preschool and an Indigenous community house. It will also more than double the amount of exhibition space available in the current building, including 7,400 square metres of galleries.

The building’s design team is lead by the Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, working with Vancouver’s Perkins & Will and consulting with Indigenous artists.

The B.C. government’s interest in museum building has been severely taxed in recent months because Premier John Horgan was forced in June to cancel an ambitious $789-million plan to totally rebuild the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria, after public outcry over the price and the eight-year closing the project required.