Vancouver: bustling, busy city has splendid museum with Canada's finest artists

Keller Keller
Sep 25
2 min read

The work of Emily Carr, a well known Canadian artist, is on display in a lovely space.

Below left, Bruce Keller and Christene "Cookie" Meyers pose in the imaginative museum.

STORY By CHRISTENE MEYERS

PHOTOS By BRUCE KELLER

"The Carpe Diem Kids"

NATIVE ART, ASIAN IMAGERY, VISITOR INVOLVEMENT ARE HIGHLIGHTS AT ONE OF CANADA'S FINEST MUSEUMS

LIKE CANADA itself, the Vancouver Art Gallery is vast and varied.

The Gallery (VAG), has a long history, approaching its centennial.

Established in 1931, it is western Canada's largest public art museum and features a vast and varied collection of over 12,000 works by local, national, and international artists.

IT LOOKS LIKE a government building -- with its imposing facade and ornate architecture. That's because it was a Vancouver's provincial courthouse for many years.

The gallery is a repurposed 19th-century building in downtown Vancouver.

As fitting its population (nearly 40 per cent Chinese, Filipino and Southeast Asian), the gallery places special emphasis on art from the Asia Pacific region and Indigenous artists.

WE SPENT an engaging afternoon in the gallery, admiring each of the nicely curated exhibitions. Coming from a family of ceramists, I was particularly enchanted by "Written in Clay: From the John David Lawrence Collection." It presents a history of ceramics created in British Columbia, told through the eyes of Lawrence. His finely crafted show represents years of collecting unique pottery -- from friends, aspiring artists and well known ceramists. The artistic friendships, shared histories and local legacies make an intriguing show and represent decades of collecting by the Vermont born, musicallly immersed Lawrence. He lived in San Francisco, studied at Boston University's School of Fine Arts and has many U.S. connections as well as a legacy of Canadian associations.

ANOTHER OF the eye-catching exhibits features the work of well known Canadian artist Emily Carr. Her nature images -- sometimes haunting, always provocative -- and she drew many of her ideas from the monumental art and villages of the First Nations and the landscapes of British Columbia. The show attracted a large group of college art students the afternoon we visited.

Cookie tries her hand at a watercolor in

large room used for hands on activities.

Colorful sculpture inspired by native

imagery caught the eye of Bruce Keller

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