The city's normally staid museum scene has recently gone into overdrive. Not only is the Museum of Anthropology finalizing a major renewal and expansion plan””to be announced Monday (June 5) and celebrated with a public party that evening””but Vancouver is also slated for three new museums by 2010: an Asia-Pacific Museum of Trade and Culture, a national Centre of Northwest Aboriginal Art and Culture, and a World Women's History Museum. Besides that, the Vancouver Museum recently added an educational wing and continues to install new permanent exhibits that trace civic history, while the Vancouver Maritime Museum is poised to go national and move to the former shipyards on North Vancouver's waterfront.

It's not so odd, then, that the Museum of Anthropology would sponsor a public discussion on the future of architecture and city planning. Its recently arrived director, Anthony Shelton, certainly sees no contradiction. In his view, museums should move away from being rarefied monuments separate from public life and become more enmeshed in the everyday urban fabric. It's this philosophy that has led the MOA to host A Dialogue of Cities, a forum from Thursday through Saturday (June 1 to 3) in which top critics from around the world will debate urban issues, Vancouver's future, and how museums fit into the grand civic plan.

“One question is, how viable are museums in the 21st century?”  Shelton asks, somewhat provocatively, during an interview in his office atop the Point Grey bluffs. “The relationship between the metropolis and the museum, and all cultural organizations, is one that's changing over time. This [event] is, in a way, our contribution to this debate about what Vancouver might become. It's part of that new engagement with the city that we'll be pursuing in the future.” 

Shelton promotes collaboration between Vancouver's new and established institutions, so that they end up working with, rather than against, one another. It seems a logical initiative, given the overlap in their mandates and collections. This is why, he adds, it's an ideal time to gather ideas about how other cities integrate their cultural institutions as well as to gain on-site advice about Vancouver's imminent development from global experts. He expects the forum's eight guests””bringing insights from Mexico City, Rome, Hong Kong, Havana, Dubai, London, Nairobi, and Manhattan””to inject new ideas into local attitudes toward museum-related and other urban matters.

During the first two evenings, each guest critic will present the recent successes and failures of one above-mentioned city in a half-hour public talk, with visuals, at two downtown locations. (Details are at www.moa.ubc.ca/programs/.) Among them is Latin American architecture critic Roberto Segre, who will talk about Havana as a living museum; Samia Rab, a Pakistani now teaching architecture outside Dubai, who's to discuss that city's almost surreal condo-and-resort development explosion; Robert Ivy, editor of the design magazine McGraw-Hill's Architectural Record of New York, who'll give an update of Manhattan's city processes since 9/11; and London-based Joseph Rykwert, who will present the challenges of building new museums amid the historical riches of Rome.

These various views and approaches from key international regions are intended to influence Vancouver's public and city shapers to think more broadly about where this city is going. Then the tables will be turned. During the day, organizers will take the guest experts from around the globe on a “soup to nuts”  tour of this city, feeding them impressions of the ravaged Downtown Eastside as well as False Creek and Coal Harbour's glittering residential towers. This leads up to a final, unfettered dialogue about Vancouver in the Great Hall at the MOA on the third evening (June 3), with additional input from local commentators such as architect Bing Thom, urban advocate Joyce Drohan, and developer and Bill Reid Foundation founding director Herb Auerbach.

“You've got fresh minds””public intellectuals who are used to controversy and don't avoid staking out opinions,”  says Trevor Boddy, a local architecture critic who guest-curated the forum, over lunch at a Kitsilano eatery. “It's a bit like an international smorgasbord. We're putting out plates of people who think in different ways, with different backgrounds, united by their passion for cities. We'll give people a taste over two nights, and the third will be the after-dinner brandy and cigars””the discussion, caveats, extensions. Like any good conversation, we don't know how it will end.” 

The event will be a warm-up to the World Urban Forum, the United Nations conference about cities that takes place in Vancouver from June 19 to 23. What sets apart A Dialogue of Cities, Boddy points out, is that it asks outspoken critics, accustomed to communicating specialist ideas to the general public, to target their brainpower on this city. The debate might encourage Vancouver to employ more local architects in creating its new cultural complexes or the MOA to establish a digital network of interpretation points scattered throughout the city””just some ideas raised during the Straight's conversations with Boddy and Shelton. Whatever the outcome, it's bound to be a dynamic exercise that helps weigh Vancouver's options.