New Burnaby Art Gallery Forum – Nov. 3, 2015
The Burnaby Arts Council is pleased to announce a Public Forum on the topic of a “New Public Art Gallery For Burnaby”. Tuesday, November 3, 2015, 7:30pm, Room 103 at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in Burnaby.
The forum will begin with a brief presentation of the history of the current facility and an overview of several well-conceived, but unrealized, plans from past decades to build a new city gallery that would meet the growing cultural needs of the Burnaby community and bring significant economic benefits to the City. The forum will include brief presentations from a panel that includes members of the arts and education community. Panelists will share their visions for a new gallery and how a new facility would provide significant benefits to our dynamic community. The second half of the evening is reserved for the comments of audience members who will be encouraged to share their vision for a new gallery and why a new a gallery is needed in Burnaby. Admission is free.
The present Burnaby Art Gallery was opened in 1967 in Ceperley House at Deer Lake and it has amassed a collection of over 5,000 significant art works on paper from noted artists including Robert Young, Sybil Andrews, Gordon Smith, and Jack Shadbolt. This is the third largest collection of art in B.C. Ceperley House is a heritage home and was not designed as a gallery and it has significant limitations. There is no environmentally controlled storage for the city art collection in the building, exhibition spaces are small thereby restricting the type of exhibitions that can be shown, and the building lacks adequate spaces for social gatherings and education programming.
Since the gallery opened in 1967, the population of Burnaby has almost doubled. Burnaby is now the third largest city in B.C. Similarly the architecture and transportation face of the city has also changed dramatically. The Burnaby Arts Council believes that it is time for Burnaby to build a new city gallery that can properly host and show its collection and best reflect the reality of our shared creativity, community growth and urban change.
Bill Thomson, President of the Burnaby Arts Council, had this comment: “Burnaby is the 20th largest city in Canada. Every other city of similar size has a contemporary, purpose-built gallery that provides significant cultural and economic benefits to its community. Why not Burnaby?”
For more information contact Bill Thomson, Chairperson, Burnaby Arts Council, tel 604 298-7322 or email at: info@burnabyartscouncil.org.
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