VANCOUVER.- Following health and safety protocols from the BC government and provincial health officials, the Vancouver Art Gallery will reopen on June 15. The Gallery aims to provide a welcoming and safe environment so that all visitors can enjoy the Gallery’s exhibitions with ease.

The Gallery salutes the tireless work and sacrifices of BC’s frontline workers – Vancouver's local heroes – during these extraordinary times and the gallery will offer them two mornings of free, early access admission during the first week of reopening.

“Art can help us to heal and provide opportunities for reflection, laughter and joy, something we can all use after this lengthy period of isolation,” shared Daina Augaitis, Interim Director. "With plenty of room for physical distancing, the Gallery offers a safe space for visitors to revisit their favourite artworks or discover new ones.”

Starting Monday, June 15, 2020, the Gallery will reopen with the following schedule:

Monday, June 15, 10 AM to 5 PM – special reopening day for members, artists and donors

Tuesday, June 16, 10 AM to noon – special hours and free entry for frontline workers and their families; noon to 5 PM open to the public; 5 PM to 8 PM by donation

Wednesday, June 17, 10 AM to 5 PM - open to the public

Thursday, June 18, 10 AM to 5 PM - open to the public

Friday, June 19, 10 AM to noon – special hours and free entry for frontline workers and their families; noon to 8 PM open to the public (new Friday hours)

Upon reopening, the Vancouver Art Gallery will have new safety protocols to protect staff, members and visitors, following government guidelines:

• All visitors are to self-assess before visiting the Gallery. Visitors who are not feeling well must stay home.

• Visitors are strongly encouraged to wear self-provided masks. Masks will be available for purchase at a nominal cost.

• The Gallery will limit the building’s capacity and use floor markers and signage to prevent congestion. For our full four floors, Gallery capacity will be 225 visitors at a time.

• Online timed-entry ticketing based on one-hour intervals must be purchased from the Gallery website in advance. This has been implemented to manage crowding, capacity and queuing.

• Members can book their timed-entry tickets starting June 9.

• Timed-entry ticket sales will open to the general public on June 11.

• Once in the galleries, we ask all visitors to maintain a two-metre distance from each other. Household groups may remain together. Children must stay with adults at all times.

• Service desks have plexiglass barriers and floor decals are placed in the lobby to indicate visitor spacing in line-ups for service desks.

• Hand-sanizers are available in the lobby, and stringent cleaning practices especially for frequently touched items are in place throughout the Gallery.

Acitivities and Events

• In order to avoid large group gatherings, all public tours, onsite school aand adult programs and special events have been postponed until further notice. This includes all social events, FUSE and exhibition openings.

• Art Connects and Art At Home online programs will continue to be offered weekly.

Exhibitions:

The Gallery reopens with an exciting exhibition line-up. Shuvinai Ashoona – Mapping Worlds and lineages and land bases have been extended to August. New exhibitions that were slated to open in March will now open on June 15: The Tin Man Was a Dreamer: Allegories, Poetics and Performances of Power and NEXT: Matilda Aslizadeh – Moly and Kassandra. The much-awaited exhibition Modern in the Making: Post-War Craft and Design in British Columbia, which was scheduled for a May opening, will now open on July 18.

EXTENDED
Rapture, Rhythm and the Tree of Life: Emily Carr and Her Female Contemporaries
On view through December 13, 2020

Drawn primarily from the Vancouver Art Gallery’s collection, Rapture, Rhythm and the Tree of Life: Emily Carr and Her Female Contemporaries focuses on artwork from the first half of the twentieth century by women artists based in British Columbia and presents an expanded account of the context in which modernism developed on the Canadian West Coast during the early to mid-1900s.

Shuvinai Ashoona – Mapping Worlds
On view through August 30, 2020
Shuvinai Ashoona: Mapping Worlds brings together a selection of drawings created by the acclaimed Inuk artist over the past two decades. While many of Shuvinai’s drawings contain traditional Inuit motifs, she is best known for the imaginative way that she incorporates these and other cultural references to develop her own sophisticated and highly personal iconography. With imagery ranging from closely observed everyday scenes of her Arctic home to strange and fantastical visions, Shuvinai’s brightly coloured drawings teem with life and blur the boundaries between fantasy and reality, past and future.

lineages and land bases
On view through August 30, 2020
Contemporary works made since the 1960s are brought into dialogue with a focused look at the lives and work of two important women in British Columbia’s history: Sewiṉchelwet (Sophie Frank) (1872–1939), from the Sḵwx̱wś7mesh Śxwumixw (Squamish Nation), and Emily Carr (1871–1945), the first in her British family to be born in Canada. The comparison of Sewiṉchelwet’s basketry with Carr’s late landscapes both prefigures and extends the critique of the separation of nature and culture, seen elsewhere in the exhibition, through two distinct yet interconnected perspectives. The exhibitions urges us to think anew about identity and its ties to the non-human world.

NEW
The Tin Man Was a Dreamer: Allegories, Poetics and Performances of Power
June 15, 2020, to November 1, 2020
The spectacle of physical power and violence has long permeated the visual cultures of Western civilization. The Tin Man Was a Dreamer: Allegories, Poetics and Performances of Power draws on these histories in more than sixty works in diverse media made from the seventeenth century to the present. Comprised primarily of works from the Gallery’s permanent collection, the exhibition focuses on displays of aggression, political theatre and performance of the self.

NEXT: Matilda Aslizadeh – Moly and Kassandra
June 15, 2020, to November 1, 2020
Vancouver-based artist Matilda Aslizadeh’s engaging video and photographic installation Moly and Kassandra (2018), addresses the relationship between culture and resource extraction through the juxtaposition of economic statistics, divinations of the future and images of immense holes in the earth.