vancouver art gallery

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while i was in vancouver, i also headed to the vancouver art gallery! i went with my boyfriend, who was not super excited about it to begin with. we arrived at the end of the day and were able to use our student IDs to get a discount on entrance. the museum had been mentioned a few different times in the guidebook and i was pretty excited.

when we arrived, the building is quite beautiful. we asked for a map of the museum, but they do not have one. Once we started through the museum, we saw that a map was not really necessary. each floor was on a complete exhibit and the top floor is currently closed.

the first exhibit started out as interesting...i hoped it would get betteras we went up. it was a good start. it was an exhibition titled we: vancouver. it was a good view of vancouver values and ideals. some of the ideas were unusual and i have seen similar things discussed in detroit like the urban farms and new urban building development.

the next exhibit we visited was ken lum exhibit appropriately titled ken lum.  it seemed to be modern design using signs and pictures with text typically next to the picture to contrast.  i felt like this exhibit was missing context for visitors who had not seen his work prior.  even the brochure seemed unclear to me.  at this point, my boyfriend started getting a little antsy to leave.  

the final straw in my boyfriend's mind was the last exhibit, from the collection: unreal.  it just took it to far for him.  this again was difficult to understand and border on absurd.

i was quite disappointed.  the guidebook kept emphasizing the emily carr collection that was at the museum.  after reviewing the website again after viewing, it still is unclear to me that attending the museum would yield NO pieces of art by emily carr.  when a museum is that well known for a particular artist, the museum should make it obvious when no pieces will be available.  to make it even worse, the art that emily carr is known for is just about the other end of the spectrum from the art that was available to view.

times visited: 1
time in museum: 1 hr
overall: B-

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