The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) announced Tuesday that it has pulled the plug on a long-planned new gallery project designed by the Swiss architect firm Herzog and de Meuron after its initial budget of from C$400m ($296.4m) ballooned to C$600m ($444.6m).
The suspension of the relationship with the architecture firm, which unveiled its initial design in 2015, was confirmed by VAG director Anthony Kiendl. “We are grateful for our partnership with them, which has helped shape our thinking around what a museum could look like in the 21st century and provided valuable research that can be applied moving forward,” he said in a statement. “However, in view of our reassessment, the Gallery Association’s Board has made the difficult decision to part ways with Herzog and de Meuron.”
The architecture firm did not respond to The Art Newspaper’s request for comment.
The news that the VAG is going back to the drawing board was not unexpected, but after more than a decade in the works and already C$60 ($42.6m) million in costs—mainly pre-construction architectural and trades fees—it has alarmed Vancouver’s tight-knit arts community. In August it was revealed that the projected cost of the building had increased by 50%, or C$200m ($148.2m).
Although a “ground awakening” ceremony was held last year at the proposed new building’s Larwill Park site—around 500m from the gallery’s current location—construction, originally due to begin this past October, was delayed.
Timelines for construction and completion of the project changed over the course of several years. In 2012, costs were estimated at C$300 million. A few years later, when the city council voted to set aside the land at Larwill Park, the planned opening date was 2019, which shifted several months later to 2020. At the 2023 launch event, the projected opening date was 2028.
“Our goal is to create a building that embodies a diverse and inclusive artistic vision while ensuring financial sustainability within a fixed budget,” Kiendl added this week. “We recognise that inflation has put tremendous pressure on our plans, as it has done with many capital projects following the pandemic. It has become clear that we require a new way forward to meet both our artistic mission and vision and our practical needs.”
Prominent Vancouver real estate marketer and collector Bob Rennie—a former chair of the North America Acquisitions Committee at the Tate and current chair of collections at the National Gallery in Washington, DC—has long been a critic of the new VAG project. In an interview with CTVthis week he crowed, “I won.” But in an interview with The Art Newspaper, he said that “Vancouver lost”, adding that the project’s latest setback is “a black eye for the city”.
“I told them 12 years ago they could never raise the money for the building,” Rennie says. “Vancouver is not the kind of city that can handle a $600m starchitecture project.”
While he acknowledged that inflation played a role in the decision, Rennie contends other factors contributed to the Herzog and de Meuron project’s failure, such as: “Proceeding without governance and without asking tough questions. They spent $60m on a building they had no ability to ever build.” While he had considered donating some of his personal collection to the new gallery, he is now looking at the National Gallery of Canada as a possible custodian.
The Vancouver philanthropist and collector Michael Audain, whose foundation pledged C$100m to the new VAG project, tells The Art Newspaper he is “disappointed that the building isn’t going ahead as planned”.
His foundation’s pledge, he adds, was contingent on the design by Herzog and de Meuron. “If they’re planning to build something else—we need to wait and see what that consists of,” he says. “Hopefully it will be something we can support.”
He added that support would not be forthcoming unless the new architect were a Canadian. “We have no shortage of talented architects,” Audain says, “both in Vancouver and across the country. It would be a major mistake to open the competition up again internationally.” (Audain’s namesake institution in Whistler, the Audain Art Museum, was designed by the Vancouver-headquartered firm Patkau Architects.)
Still, Audain says he is committed to supporting a new gallery building in Vancouver. “There’s a pronounced need for a new building to house the Vancouver Art Gallery,” he says. “It’s not adequate nor consummate with the importance of visual art in our town and province.”
The current building he says, “has serious limitations—in terms of its colonial legacy (as a former courthouse) and lack of space for permanent exhibitions and need for seismic upgrading”.
