Frank Gehry, the Toronto kid made good, returned in triumph to his hometown today at the press launch for the remodelled Art Gallery of Ontario. He, and the AGO, have come a long way.
After winning this gig in 2000, Mr. Gehry presented an early model, saying he was inspired by hockey arenas. Many groaned. Happily, through the process Mr. Gehry has gained an appreciation that there’s more to Canadian culture than hockey.
“I didn’t know the length and width and breadth and power of [Canadian art],” Mr. Gehry confessed to a crush of press today. “Now that I see it in all its glory, it fills me with pride. Having grown up here, it is with great pride that I realize how important it is.”
Later, he said he’d never intended to honour hockey. “There was an event to present a model, and Ken Dryden was there, and Mats Sundin and Frank Mahovlich. I thought, “˜Oh my God, something is wrong here. This looks like a hockey arena.’ I went to great lengths to get rid of that image.”
He succeeded. His AGO, remodelled for $300-million, is a spiritual place, a light-filled house of worship to such great Canadians as Lawren Harris and Tom Thomson and Henry Moore and Cornelius Kreighoff.
The smell of sawdust lingers in the air. The best part of the new AGO is all the wood. Mr. Gehry covered his majestic spiral staircase, which swirls up through the Walker Court and pierces its new glass ceiling, with vertical grain Douglas fir. Wood is everywhere, on the balcony that wraps around the Court, on the floors, on the stairs, on other wildly curving railings, on the huge ribs of the Galleria Italia, which lines the Dundas Street side. One reporter asked the architect whether Canada had inspired him to use so much wood.
“There is a sense of wood in my DNA and I use it a lot,” Mr. Gehry said. “I suppose I use it here more than elsewhere. The Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. has the same kind of wood, but it doesn’t look so Canadian in L.A.”
Mr. Gehry predicted that the new museum will herald a renewed appreciation of Canadian painting.
“I brought a fancy New York museum director here a couple weeks ago, and he was knocked out. He said he’d never seen anything like it before.”
The AGO fought its share of battles over the eight-year transformation, starting when top benefactor Joey Tannenbaum slammed the boardroom door over the planned desecration of the Joey and Toby Tannenbaum atrium. (He later returned). Neighbours protested the titanium blue tower Gehry stuck on the AGO’s south side, looming over Grange Park, in open defiance of a deal the AGO made with residents after its last expansion in 1993.
It appears all the fuss was worth it. Today Charles Baillie, president of the board of trustees, triumphantly told the assembled: “We have reached a new milestone of $300-million in donations. Energized by the vision, more than 3,500 donors have invested in this remarkable community moment.” Over all, the AGO surpassed its $276-million fundraising goal.
Perhaps most wonderful are the AGO’s plans to welcome the community.Yes, admission rises from $15 to $18. Still, Matthew Teitelbaum, chief executive, announced today that, henceforth, every high school student in Toronto can enter the AGO for free on every school day of the year, after 3:30 p.m. The AGO is free Wednesday evenings, and is free for the next three days.
The gallery is predicting crowd control issues. You won’t find parking; my advice is, walk from nearby St. Patrick subway station, or take the Dundas streetcar, a conveyance to which Mr. Gehry paid tribute today.
“It’s a kind of front porch to the city,” he said of his Dundas Street façade. “When I stood at the entry level and a streetcar went by it was like the streetcar was in the room with me.”
Welcome home, Frank.
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