Vancouver Art Gallery forming artist advisory group on relocation plan

It is interesting to hear "it is critical to hear from those working in the visual arts" since the VAG has never considered local artists worthy unless fostered by a tiny group of gallery and artistic elitists. There has never been any relationship between vancouver galleries and vancouver artists (but for the few, all from one or two galleries selected) and the VAG. Over the years I have seen a huge amount of expertise and talent thrown aside and ignored with cronyism and nepotism installed in its place. The VAG is more like a bunch of rich friends trying to impress each other and ignoring some truly brilliant local talent that have all but been physically kicked in the ass by the VAG. It is commonly understood that a number of very good ideas have been presented to the VAG and a few of them could have generated several more million dollars in revenue and further involvement with local artists and have been rejected largely because the "status Quo" is the most important thing going on there and any new and fresh idea are viewed as threats to their status. The VAG only works with a select few galleries and thumbs their noses up to all the others (a very sizeable community which long ago stopped trying to contribute anything to the VAG because of their constant rejection of everything that didn't fit into their form of "fine art").
I believe Mr Rennie's idea to be brilliant (or another would have been to build a skywalk over to at least 25-50,000 square feet in the old Sears building costing less than 300 million dollars) but the fact is the politics and safeguards preserving the status Quo are so entrenched in this community I'm afraid any good idea will be rejected and the self aggrandizing proposal of the current director will likely win out.
There are so many talented people in this city that have been burned and insulted by the VAG and its policies that I doubt if there ever will be any productive bridge between the talent of the city and the politics as usual of the VAG. So this statement of "hearing from the artists" is simply a useful political statement that has no meaning other than preserving the status Quo.

I agree with pavlik that hearing from the artists is probably a sham, but for good reason I think. The VAG is NOT in the business of promoting local art--that is a job for commercial galleries. (The VAG is supposed to be a museum and not a gallery in the commercial sense.) However, to pavlik et. al. the gallery does seem to be obsessed with recent and purely local art--so you should be happy. The problem is the local and recent art produced in Vancouver isn't very good by historical standards (even if the critics like it and the audience doesn't know better). I'm not saying we should abandon this art--there may be things to be learned. But the primary area of weakness in the collection is the lack of any sort of global historical focus. Have you ever seen a 15th century European painting in the VAG's permanent collection? Or how about an African mask? Silkscreens from Japan? A Pre-Columbian figurine? The VAG may possess such things, but we've never seen them, and either way, that's our loss. No offense intended, but input from local artists is irrelevant. What IS relevant is that the VAG has a public educational mission (like every other self-respecting museum in the world) and is getting an F for the moment. A large and beautiful space with architectural details from long ago and far away would be the first step in fulfilling this mission.