The Winter Olympics begins in Vancouver, Canada today.
For some, this is not an event to be celebrated. The Olympics Resistance Network is leading a major protest and the Vancouver Art Gallery is their meeting point; from there they will march towards the stadium in time for opening ceremonies.
Hopefully, the protest will not be the only thing that draws attention to the Vancouver Art Gallery during the Olympics. For art lovers looking for fill in the time between skiing, skating and tobogganing, the Gallery’s current line-up of shows will provide a great distraction.
For starters, the Gallery’s Georgia Street facade is covered with Michael Lin’s 6,000-square-foot mural titled ‘Georgia Street Plaza’ until May. The piece incorporates patterns of Taiwanese fabric and covers the Gallery’s entire northern exterior. Lin’s interest in “wrapping” the exterior of the Gallery as well as his proposed book-wrapping project for the Gallery store, which will cover Gallery publications in a wrapping paper of his own design, seems to be the direct influence of Christo and the late Jean-Claude.
Other exhibitions showing at the Vancouver Art Gallery throughout the Winter Olympics include Visions of British Columbia: A Landscape Manual, a survey of art that represents the artistic diversity in British Columbia; he Vancouver Art Gallery will turn its exterior into an open-air exhibition space with CUE: Artists’ Videos, a presentation of video art on the Gallery’s Robson Street facade; Visceral Bodies, a presentation of the work of contemporary artists who investigate the human form, tracing artistic responses to scientific and medical innovations over the past two decades; and last but not least, Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man comprising a group of drawings, referred to as the Anatomical Manuscript A, which concentrates on the structures of the body and the movements of musculature. Shown for the first time as a complete group in this exhibition.
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