Montreal takes first spot among N. American convention stops

Montreal has become the leading destination among North American cities for international conventions, according to the International Congress and Convention Association.

In ratings just released for 2009, Montreal led all North American cities with 57 international events, followed by Vancouver (46), Toronto (36), Boston (35), Mexico City (33), Washington (31) and New York (28).

In '08, Vancouver led N. American destinations with 54, followed by Montreal (45) , Quebec City (37), Toronto (35), Boston (34), Washington D.C. (28), Mexico City (27), Cancun (26), Chicago (26), NYC (16), San Jose (16), San Diego (16), Miami (14), Panama City (14) and Hololulu (12).

Just a cursory glance at these rankings show that several Canadian destinations, including Ottawa, Halifax, Edmonton, Calgary, Banff and Whistler (which may well be included in the Vancouver numbers), have huge potential to progress.

Vancouver 2010: The Legacy is in the Follow Through

All that remains of the 201o Olympics is to determine the winner of the ultimate prize: the hockey gold, in a few hours, and then set upon the surely gargantuan task of debriefing, evaluating and pontificating.

The games have been great for the athletes and a smashing success with the public, at least on the surface and running pretty deep for that matter, at least in Canada. There are undercurrents of discontent, of course. Mostly from people who have problems with either the corporate elitism and waste/expense of the games or from the extreme Quebec nationalists, who cringe at the very sight of their youth draped in red and white, being wildly applauded by Vancouver audiences.

I would like to pontificate about one specific aspect of the Olympics. I am talking, to give it a sports spin, about the follow through.



I'm not so much talking about the immediate economic impact, such as drawing a few more tourists to B.C. for the next year or two, as the video implies. I'm talking more about the lasting effect.

All Canadians now have a chance to think about what legacy these games can have. I have heard many people say that there has been no other event as spectacular and unifying as these Olympics in Canada since Expo '67. Neither the Calgary Olympics nor the '76 Montreal Olympics really seemed to have the nationwide, gut-stirring power that these games have had.

In fact, these games have probably been more unifying than Expo '67, and in the same postal code in terms of their power to inspire and empower Canadians and grab the imagination of the country. Another thing that Vancouver 2010 had, that Expo didn't have, even in the '60s, was a substantial and formidable opposition to the hype. This, also, is a part of the Canadian psyche, a part commonly known as a conscience - and the games have given it its largest stage ever. This movement needs to be nurtured and given wings, just as the games' successes.

Unfortunately, after Expo '67, the follow up did not live up to the promise. "Man and His World" was not capable of being the sequel to the Expo dream. If we could have had a suitable follow-up program, designed to reconfirm Montreal's position as a place of creative substance, rather than of disposable pavilions, Canada might have had a different future entirely. That said, I wonder whether the Cirque du Soleil would have ever come about if it had not been for the festive and creative legacy of Expo '67.

Now, the challenge is to do something with the 2010 legacy.

The Harper Conservatives have already announced they will be ditching the controversial $110 million "Own the Podium" program immediately. A very wrong first move but nothing definitive.

To give greater meaning to the games and give them every chance of achieving good in the long run, a lot of people will need to think outside the box. It is not only about the massive grandiose mega-projects, it is also about individuals across the country, who can somehow find a way to leverage these Olympics in a way to project their dreams onto an international screen...

Is Canadian Visual Art the equivalent of the Jamaican Bobsled team?

Ha-ha! Brings back memories... what a great film this was!

The whole idea of promoting visual art in Canada truly does bring to mind the Jamaican bobsledders, though, as alluded to in the previous post.

Or, I think of a guy I knew a few years back at the curling club who used to go around with a super fancy curling jacket with "England" written across the back in big embroidered letters. He had been living there a number of years ago and was able to knock off all comers and win the right to curl for England! This guy was not a bad curler but give me a break - there were numerous curlers in our club who beat him or outcurled him regularly

Pretty cool, nonetheless. I forget what event he had curled for England in. I don't think it was Olympics.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint), Canadian visual art is in somewhat the same circumstances.

With all due respect to Emily Carr, Jean-Paul Riopelle and the "Group", we simply do not have any visual artists who have attained world renown. Amongst contemporary artists, we have Jeff Wall and, to a lesser degree, maybe Rodney Graham and a few others who have a detectable pulse on the world stage - but we are talking top 100 or 300 - not top 10.

i.e. - there is an opportunity here, folks.

Beating the bushes to figure out how to promote Canadian art

Starting from a position so far in the rear of most G8 or even many G20 countries in terms of cultural influence (especially visual art), Canadians need to look for ways to jump up the stairway two steps at a time, if not faster. We need to build followings, we need to create buzz, we need to extend our reach and so forth. One way to build up a following of course is to start a Facebook group. This is something we have done just recently.

Initially Canada was one of the more connected countries on the internet. I have heard that, of late, our leadership position has weakened quite a bit.

However, this is something that can be corrected, at least as long as Canada remains in a position of some economic advantage in comparison to the vast majority of countries in the world.

In terms of visual art, it just so happens that most of the countries that are head and shoulders beyond us in terms of influence and prestige, are also the ones that are pretty much on a par with us economically, such as Germany, the U.S., France and the U.K.

We can look for advantages to exploit... for example, one advantage is that we speak English in Canada. This gives us a built in marketing advantage, even though most "competitors" in non-English speaking countries strive to master their English and are very often successful in impressive fashion. In addition to this, a lot of Canadians also speak French - so that could be another advantage to explore.

But what else is there?

OK, let's try to make a list:

* we have access to a "little pond"; beginning Canadian art marketers can test the waters in the smaller Canadian market
* we are close to the U.S. and have other commonalities
* we are very diverse culturally and ethnically
* there are no dominant, overbearing powers in Canadian art overshadowing everything else
* or... you almost have the Jamaican Bobsled phenomenon in Canadian visual art
* apart from that, I'm not sure, but I guess one of the keys would be to use all of these angles to best advantage by applying social networking and other web techniques

Anyway, this is the assignment in a nutshell.

B.C. culture picking up an Olympic boost

Question: What do William Gibson, Steven Galloway, Diana Krall, Mike Allen, Matthew Good, William Patrick Kinsella, Timothy Taylor, Alisa Smith, J.B. Mackinnon, Michele Smolkin, Douglas Coupland, Les Henderson, Nelly Furtado, John Vaillant, Hey Ocean, Delhi 2 Dublin, New Pornographers, Mother Mother, The Paperboys, Sarah McLachlan, Joy Kogawa, Deni Yvan Bechard, Annabel Lyon, Michael Buble and Bryan Adams all have in common?

All those people listed are B.C. or former B.C. residents who are successful in the arts, who were featured in this week's issue of Quebec magazine L'Actualite.

It was part of a 38-page feature on Vancouver and British Columbia in the magazine, dissecting the life, culture, history, politics, first nations, immigrants, wildlife and (yes) scenery of British Columbia in greater detail and with greater empathy, understanding and sophistication than has ever occurred in a Quebec publication in the past 200 years. Oh there were also a few pages of items about the prospects of Quebec athletes.

I was at another magazine stand a couple of weeks ago in a suburban Montreal french area, and I just about had to pick up my jaw off the floor as I noticed two different magazines with the word "Revelstoke" on the front cover - and they weren't referring to building supplies.

I've seen numerous other examples, over the past few weeks especially, of how Quebecers have been getting more information about Vancouver and British Columbia than you would ever hear, if it weren't for the Olympics.

RDS has had someone living in Vancouver already for months just writing impressions and observations.

I assume this is going on throughout the world to a greater or lesser degree.

So, just to say I wouldn't be so quick to write off the benefits of the Olympics in terms of promoting understanding among the peoples of the world. Even if the cost of staging the Olympics turns out to be higher than the obvious economic impacts accrued - there are some benefits that can't be simply brushed off as easily as one might suppose.

Having an Olympics certainly beats having a war. And it even beats having everyone stay home.

Influential Canadians in the Art World - Jeff Hamada

"People often say to me, You were really lucky to have made an art site when no one was doing it,' and that's true to a certain extent," Hamada says. "But as soon as you see the opportunity, you have to be able to pounce on it."

That's how Vancouver blogger Jeff Hamada, has been quoted describing his success in articles printed across Canada in the National Post and throughout the bankruptcy-protected Canwest chain this week.

Interesting that Hamada would agree that no one was making an art site before Booooooom.

Seems to me there have been a "couple" of art blogs around for slightly longer than that - lol.

What is amazing, though, is to compare the success of Hamada's blog to the dismal failure of the Canwest chain - especially the National Post.

Canadian Democracy not sidestepped - only suspended!

Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber says:

"Democracy and Parliament are not being sidestepped — they are only being suspended."

Looks like Stephen Harper needs to pick up the slack on muzzling his MPs!

2010 in Edmonton Begins with New Art Gallery of Alberta Reopening

The new Art Gallery of Alberta, designed by Randall Stout Architects, opens in just 27 days, on January 31, 2010.


Art Gallery of Alberta


Former Edmonton Art Gallery

The exhibition program for the new gallery includes:

EDGAR DEGAS: Figures in Motion
January 31–May 30, 2010

Franciso Goya: The Disasters of War and Los Caprichos
January 31–May 30, 2010

Karsh: Image Maker
January 31–May 30, 2010

The Murder of Crows by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller
January 31–May 9, 2010

After $88 million in renovations, the new gallery has a total of 85,000 sq. ft. of usable space and doubles the amount of exhibition space to 30,000 sq. ft. There is also a dedicated gallery space for the 6,000 pieces in the permanent collection, as well as educational and other public spaces.

The AGA has entered into a 3-year partnership agreement with the National Gallery of Canada, in which space in the AGA building will be reserved for special exhibitions presented jointly by both institutions. The Goya exhibition will be the first of this series.

There will be free admission for the first two days of the gallery's operation.

The '00s Decade in Edmonton Arts More About the '10s, According to Them

Like most Canadian cities, Edmonton struggles to define its artistic heritage and vision.

The '00s was the decade where they actually got that struggle down in writing.

Edmonton's cultural plan, titled The Art of Living, was published in 2008 and plots out some kind of a path through to 2018.

That plan is noticeably handicapped by such statements as the following:

"Edmonton’s inferiority complex is as deep and murky as the North Saskatchewan River flowing through the middle of it."

Taken from an essay included in the plan, titled Boom, Bust, by Todd Babiak, that sentence is a really unfortunate idea to propagate within the city's own cultural roadmap.

Another section of the plan, labeled "The Edmonton Story", begins with this tepid blurb:

"Edmonton is seen by many outside the city, and many inside it, as a new place, a place without significant traditions or history."

Nearby, the following passage:

This document is meant to
act as an inspirational tool for artists, heritage
workers and administrators alike, but it’s also
reflective of another aspect of a western, and
Edmontonian, sensibility, which is this: we get
things done. This plan contains dozens of
action-oriented recommendations. In some
ways, it is a feel good document, but documents
are better than feel good if they also do some
good.

Excuse me? A "feel good document"?

Unfortunately, anyone reading this document is not going to come away feeling good. They are going to come away thinking, "Edmonton may have good intentions but isn't quite there yet."

Or, maybe they'll think, "heh, heh, Edmonton is to culture as Stephane Dion is to politics."

Anyway (would I do anything as dumb as write, "any-who"? no way!) some may say that Edmonton is only being honest by including such downers in a cultural plan. I ask, how many times have you told your mother-in-law she has bad breath and her clothes don't fit?

If your MIL is working on a plan, and you wanna help, maybe you stick breathmints or mouthwash in there at the most inconspicuous place, along with four-dozen other sundry items, without actually making it the headline of the central thesis, so that she doesn't talk to anyone within ten feet of her for the rest of her life.

I remember arriving in Montreal after spending years in Alberta (near Edmonton) and Saskatchewan. At the time, I was aware, for some reason, that Edmonton had twenty-some-odd theater companies. It immediately dawned on me that Montreal, the supposed cultural mecca, had a similar sized English-speaking population (about a million people) to Edmonton yet Montreal only had three English theater companies - one-tenth the number as Edmonton!

Based on that alone, I can say with authority that Edmonton's cultural plan is pure hogwash.

With the proliferation of the internet, social networking, Youtube, hundreds of TV channels, etc., the numbers of people engaged in various forms of art and social networking vastly surpass the numbers engaged in same even ten years ago. With that in mind, it could be said that, in many ways, all cities have returned to a nearly even position in terms of their art establishments. The only things that keep them differentiated are mostly false pretensions which are only validated when people believe them, and, the almighty art buck which, unfortunately, is located in places like New York, London, Milan, L.A. and Miami, and in places like Shanghai, Venice and Paris... anywhere but in Canada.

That said, given Toronto's nano-microscopic profile on the world visual art stage, there is no valid reason for a city like Edmonton to apologize for its own culture or its history. We need all of Canada producing art at full throttle in order to stake out our place on the vast mural of global culture.

It may be honest to include negatives - it is never dishonest to omit them. Time is short and art thrives. Rewrite the damn plan, get out there and make art!

(to be continued...)

Blockbusters the trend at VAG through the '00s

Reduced government contributions sent galleries looking for alternate ways of boosting revenues in the '00s and what worked in Vancouver has been the blockbuster show.

A 2002 show featuring Emily Carr, Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keefe was highly successful and led to more shows in a similar vein.

Dali, Monet and other modernists were the headliners in '07, setting the VAG's all-time record of 7,600 visitors in one day, and this past year featured appearances by Vermeer and Rembrandt.


Pine on the corner, by Jeff Wall, 1990

Vancouver artists did attract some international attention as well. Jeff Wall, Ken Lum, Rodney Graham, Ian Wallace, Roy Arden, Stan Douglas and Brian Jungen were among the many artists from Vancouver who were part of major exhibitions in private galleries and public institutions around the world during the decade.

The other phenomenon of the decade in Canadian Art, from the Vancouver perspective, has been the ascent of local auctioneers Robert Heffel and brother David. They have auctions in both Vancouver and Toronto and hold the record for sales at auction, $23 million which was set in May 2007.

(based on an article by Keven Griffin in the Vancouver Sun)