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Leaks, woes a smudge on Crystal’s sparkle
VAL ROSS

From Wednesday’s Globe and Mail

October 3, 2007 at 1:00 AM EDT

Good thing it was a dry summer. The new Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto’s most talked-about new edifice, leaks.

At least, it did leak. Water penetrated the north end of the long window of the C5 restaurant, and puddles have appeared near windows on the third and fourth floors.

The ROM’s CEO, William Thorsell, pushed to open the new Daniel Libeskind-designed Crystal and the rest of the renovated ROM on June 1. As construction accelerated, the contractors responsible for installing the Crystal’s cladding system warned that temporary seams around windows might leak. In August, they mopped up and repaired the problems.

As winter approaches, fingers are crossed that there will be no more puddles, and that the Crystal’s cladding, designed to prevent it from turning into an avalanche-maker, will function as well in cold reality as it does in theory. But it’s clear, four months into the Crystal’s life, the new spaces pose huge challenges, and leaks are the least of them.

An unveiling concert in June shows the Crystal in Toronto. Its new spaces pose huge challenges, and leaks are the least of them.

Far more daunting are the problems of mounting exhibits in the strange new spaces, ensuring public safety and budgeting for the new reality.

There are rumours that the Crystal’s oddly shaped, difficult-to-access windows have increased window-cleaning costs by $200,000, a figure ROM’s executive director of capital development and facilities, Al Shaikoli, disputes.

“But it is considerable,” he admitted. “In the old days, our window-cleaning budget was next to nothing.”

Safety issues are a surprise. “We didn’t predict human behaviour,” Mr Shaikoli said. On the June weekend of its grand, all-night opening, ROM staffers discovered that, particularly after the bars closed, visitors seemed more interested in the Crystal as a playground than as architecture. Staff were alarmed to see people crawling out on windows slanting over Bloor Street, apparently testing their strength.

“Mind you, these galleries were naked spaces,” Mr. Shaikoli said. “Once they’re filled with artifacts, people will be more respectful.” Display cases will soon be installed in the paths of future adventurers.

Another discovery was a trail of footprints most of the way up a fourth-floor wall that rises at a 30-degree angle. “Probably a kid took a run at it,” speculates Dan Rahimi, director of gallery development. Baseboards and stainless steel barriers are being installed to signal that a wall is a wall, even if it’s not on the straight and narrow.

“One of our major bugbears was that William wanted everything open and accessible,” says Janet Waddington, assistant curator of paleontology. “But you can’t do that – the Toronto public is extraordinarily destructive.”

Even in the old dinosaur galleries, says Ms. Waddington, people used to reach across railings to pat the prosaurolophus bones. In the ROM’s Crystal dinosaur gallery, two ancient marine reptile skeletons, a pleiosaur and a mosasaur, have been suspended from an overhanging face of the Crystal (the ceiling is too high), which puts their irreplaceable old bones within arm’s reach. By the time the gallery opens in December, a plinth or base underneath, surrounded with barriers, will keep the public’s hands at bay. “It has been horrendous,” said Ms. Waddington, “but very exciting.”

The problem of installing artifacts in a space with no vertical walls challenged Hiroshi Sugimoto, the first artist to be exhibited in the ROM’s fourth-floor Institute for Contemporary Culture. So, he designed a curving wall 4.3 metres high and 27.5 metres long, fitted with special lighting, to counteract the angular architecture. Total cost to the ROM: about $200,000. The wall was recently removed to make room for a new show of aboriginal contemporary art that opens on Saturday.

Special new display cases have been bought to match the galleries, some with trapezoidal shapes. As well, the renovation has opened the entire building, old and new parts, to more daylight, which risks bleaching museum artifacts. So the museum has acquired special blinds that filter out 96 per cent of ultraviolet light, as well as blackout blinds that block exterior light.

“Daniel didn’t design this building based on the collections,” said Mr. Rahimi. “We had to design the collections to go with the building. We have an aesthetic imperative – partly because the architecture is so strong.”

From Journal

13 October 2004
I got off at 5, walked to U of T for this lecture I was looking forward to, and quickly found it boring. It put me to sleep. It was all about the fact that radiocarbon dating is rewriting the chronologies complied by Aeagan scholars a hundred years ago, and that one branch of scholarship debates the validity of the other. This is stretched out into a Power Point presentation with the worst graphics and a monotonous delivery punctuated with a English schoolboy’s rhythms. I wanted to say, it wasn’t so bad, I fell asleep because I was tired, but my goodness. I left during question period; I decided that trying to hook up with someone for drinks and conversation wasn’t worth my time.

07 October 2005
Rain today. I awoke near quarter after 11, and have had a quiet day of words. First some writing, then, for the past hour and half, reading. Read a couple of great essays in Northrop Frye’s Divisions on a Ground and the Charles Comfort essay in the book I got from Grandmère’s in August. Almost have the feeling that I’ve got it all figured out and so I’m bored.

Last year I was motivated by what? Trudeau’s example of being a cool Canadian, his enthusiasm for the country, was infectious - this is one the highlights of his legacy for many. I guess it was thinking about Mark Kingwell, then Trudeau, then John Ralston Saul (re-reading Unconscious Civilization) and Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell - questioning why it was these amazing writers and communicators all happen to be Canadian, and how great it was to be part of that culture, one that reminded me of the Scottish Enlightenment. All of this of course, contrasted with the reality of the United States, and all that abysmal writing from France that has infected the intelligentsia of my generation.

Lament for my generation - a year ago I said once to D, thinking of the example of Scotland, ‘we’re all famous in the future, yet none of us know that so we all too busy fighting one another’. I had immense enthusiasm for my generation and our ideas (I guess today I would just say I had immense enthusiasm for my ideas) and D was pessimistic about my optimism. Because of blogs, because of the idea I had for a lecture series …. and then BlogTo came along, K’s reading group - forums to see my optimism play out. The Reading Group is great, no reason to knock it, but the blog thing I’ve become disenchanted with. Because it’s not quite living up to it’s potential. What the guy at Canada25 said to me, about how it’s no different from listening to some guy at a bar … and I couldn’t really disagree with that. That last BlogTo meeting really took the wind of my sails for it - see it as superficial. This is what my generation has to offer? Perhaps a portion of my depression is part realization that I’m always going to have a hard go at it, since I was born at an awkward time - forever experiencing ‘transitional periods’ and surrounded by a generation with small and conventional ambitions. A generation I’ve come to see as very conservative, seeking to emulate their parents, not overcome them. And so, a generation of intelligent people who become disciples to dead thinkers and dead writers, born in another country and in another time, and ignoring the science that truly answers the questions asked by generations. We now know who we are, where we came from, and have a good idea of where we might be going. A generation of Foucault and Baudriallard experts are wearing the wrong clothes for this bus ride.

That being said, I’m enthralled by the writings of a dead Canadian from my grandparent’s generation. Perhaps this is a reflection of my Generation Y sympathies - a generation I’m told (a manifestation of their more apparent conservatism) that gets along more with the grandparents at than with the parents, who are seen to be selfish (the boomers, who I see that way).

I read Saul over the winter, and felt Canadian - saw how my culture and my experience was different from that of the U.S. My enthusiasm became preaching, and I introduced his thinking to the Reading Group. His thinking on our provincial predicament had me reject the art scene and its Artforum desires … most recently exemplified by that quote about October magazine in last week’s Globe and Mail. Talking with E over coffee in the spring, and her asking ‘what’s so compelling about Canadian history?’ and me countering with, ‘what’s so compelling about the American one?’

And now, thoughts of the importance of imagination … which came via Kristeva, but which was articulated by Frye, and picked up again by Saul in his last (prior to Globalism) book. The American one is compelling perhaps because it is the only one we have access too; H goes to L.A. to work with Thomas Crow, whose book explained a lot to me last year. An American story, part of the American imagination. But his book cannot alone explain the problems of contemporary art in Canadian society. And so now, thoughts on the need for a Canadian anthology of art history.

But for me the big break through this year was understanding the imagination. Of seeing how art is all about feeding the imagination, so that our days do not seem meaningless and empty, but part of a larger context. And while it’s easy for me to talk about television as a prosthetic imagination, it is also one that ties society together with a common understanding. Canada’s imagination of itself is not [only] found in a novel - it is found in Corner Gas and Trailer Park Boys and Robson Arms … as was said this week on one of the entertainment news shows, pointing out how each show imagines a different region of the country, to introduce the development of a new show set in Toronto.

12 October 2005
Candian hope followed by Canadian dispair. The country had potential and talent, and yet the talent dispairs. Mike Bullard in today’s Globe and Mail, referring to the demise of his tv show last year - here a show doesn’t work and you’re considered a failure, in L.A. it’s no big deal. But Americans are big and forgetful, and this makes them optimistic. Perhaps it also helps to account for how toxic their cultural environment is.

Waves crash on the shoreline of Lake Ontario driven by winds.

At this resolution, the Monet damaged over the weekend is almost photographic.

From the Facebook group ‘Everyone’s an Art Critic: Toronto’ discussion topic.

Topic: What themes do you see in contemporary Toronto Art?

01. Gareth Bate wrote on Sep 17, 2007 at 4:56 PM
Do you notice any general themes in Toronto art? Any medium or imagery that is particularly prevelant?

02 .Martin Alonso (York University) replied to Gareth’s post on Sep 18, 2007 at 8:26 PM
Not relevant, but just annoying and utterly useless trends:

1. Birds: especially orioles and finch-like creatures.

2. Deer: to play on the ‘woodsy’ theme alongside the birds.
[Could this be a flash of modern Canadiana?]

3. Neon colours, such as bright magenta, cyan, and yellow.

4. And the act of drawing on walls. Carrie, this one’s for you!

Maybe they are relevant in one way or another; I’m sure they are somehow. But on the surface, the sheer repetitiveness of it all becomes nerve-wracking and a complete turn-off.

03. Gareth Bate replied to Martin’s post on Sep 19, 2007 at 5:51 AM
At the queen west art crawl there was an awful lot of picky little pencil drawings. Really precious stuff.

04. Kurt Rostek replied to Gareth’s post on Sep 19, 2007 at 4:20 PM
I’m seeing a lot of what I would call an almost frivolous if not cartoonish works..with toys, dolls …childlike memorabilia..

05. Stanzie Tooth (OCAD) wrote on Sep 20, 2007 at 10:17 AM
I’ve been seeing alot of micro/ macro stuff- semi-abstract thing based on: diseases, cells- general closeups of bodily fluids, etc.

06. Alex Mcleod replied to Martin’s post on Sep 20, 2007 at 10:37 AM
i see that martin has hurt my feelings

07. Martin Alonso (York University) replied to Alex’s post on Sep 20, 2007 at 3:27 PM
Hence, art criticism.

08. Alex Mcleod replied to Martin’s post on Sep 21, 2007 at 4:41 AM
I’m going to fight you

09. Martin Alonso (York University) replied to Alex’s post on Sep 21, 2007 at 6:03 AM
Bring it on, dear.
I’m ready!

10. Robert Farmer wrote on Sep 21, 2007 at 12:15 PM
let’s cover it in resin!

11. Alex Mcleod replied to Robert’s post on Sep 23, 2007 at 10:17 AM
only photo collages though

12. Rachel McRae replied to Martin’s post on Sep 27, 2007 at 9:22 PM
As an artist who works with deer imagery a lot I feel I need to respond.

If the use of deer is a “trend” its one with quite a rich history. Beyond mere “Canadiana,” it recalls symbolic use stretching across a vast track of geography (across all continents except Antarctica and Australia) and time (Paleolithic cave paintings in Cave Trois Frères in southern France feature a “shaman” figure crowned with horns.) The deer figures prominently in heraldry internationally, Greek, Slavic, Hindu, Judeo-Christian, Celtic.. A whole mass of religious/cultures groups use the deer as a symbol. Deer appear frequently in classic/neo-classic still lifes and imagery of the hunt…

An animal of such widespread dispersement, a rich food source (and thus economic importance) is bound to become a weighty cultural symbol. Though you yourself may not hunt deer, wear deer skin, engage directly with the animal in any way, you do have a certain connection with it. You’re talking about “art,” practicing I can only assume, and art’s connection with the deer-as-symbol is vast and dense.

Any practice with history must dialogue with its past. (Otherwise, I would argue; it is not art. If I may express a personal opinion, art becomes art when it is engaged with its historical cannon. Otherwise it is something distinct. That being said, engagement is not synonymous with compliance or agreeance.)

(With all due respect, I wouldn’t apply the term “useless” so lightly.)

13. Martin Alonso (York University) replied to Rachel’s post on Sep 27, 2007 at 10:34 PM
So, why is deer imagery so ‘important’ (or rampant) in Toronto NOW?

14. Therese Cilia (OCAD) wrote on Sep 28, 2007 at 11:19 AM
I’m getting the impression from this board that themes and trends in art is generally a bad thing, but I’m not so sure. To me, trends are inevitable and unavoidable. We’re all questioning the same universe and have been since we’ve been on this planet. We’re going to be talking about our past and our present, we’re looking at the same things and being influenced by the same things - that’s culture! We’re seeing birds, butterflies, deer, and micro/macroscopic life because they’re HERE, and so are we. If the work is ‘authentic’, not just following a trend but actually being it and questioning it, (and I know we can all realize the difference, it’s what makes a good painting a good painting or not), then birds, cells or deer - it all doesn’t matter.

As an aside, I’d like to say that the Ann Hamilton lecture was EXCITING. It actually made me a little nostalgic to be in school again and be surrounded in that atmosphere. If you’re a graduate, you know what I mean?
I love that when I hear or read Ann Hamilton, I get the feeling that her work and her voice I can never quite grasp, but am so close to getting. She’ll say or do something really profound that leaves you wanting more because you can never quite keep it all in your head. If that makes any sense at all. I love it.

15. Carrie Cutforth-Young (OCAD) wrote on Sep 29, 2007 at 12:54 PM
Deer “heads” was reintroduced into the contemporary International art scene when much of the critical discourse centred on the Archive and the museums/institutions role of dominating/destroyer/preserver of nature…and it’s also retro–like Victorian riffed wallpaper…what goes around comes around, and it finally hit Toronto

YOU CANNOT DENY OSMOSIS

popular motifs develop organically not necessarily meaning one is “following” a trend, especially if each artist has a different critical approach and style

deer heads and birds and neon is what will mark this generation of paintings as opposed to cubic abstraction or big eyed paintings, etc. is that a bad thing? no…seriously…everyone in TO working with the same motifs should put out and imprint with essays championing the varying reasons behind the use of neon/birds/dear…with Martin writing the forward

seriously…it will give Martin a topic to lecture future OCAD students about

AND AS FAR AS DRAWING ON WALLS:

for me, Dood was a mere momentary interruption of the usual really bad community arts practice with the synthesis of participatory culture theory made manifest in the physical and digital realms

16. Carrie Cutforth-Young (OCAD) replied to Robert’s post on Sep 29, 2007 at 12:59 PM
covering it in resin was sooo last years TIFF

it made the 3 or so resinless paintings really stand out

i swear thats the only reason I go to TIFF, is to see which trend has exhausted itself into implosion

17. Carrie Cutforth-Young (OCAD) replied to Carrie’s post on Sep 29, 2007 at 1:02 PM
we could call the book “deers, birds, neon OH MY!”

18. Gareth Bate replied to Rachel’s post on Oct 2, 2007 at 9:31 PM
Can you post a link to your work?

19. Martin Alonso (York University) replied to Carrie’s post on Oct 2, 2007 at 11:30 PM
“I’ll foreword anytime!” says the next up-and-coming art historian/editor/anthologist. I have big plans ahead, Carrie…

;P

20. Liz Pead wrote on Oct 4, 2007 at 12:19 PM
As a landscape painter, I find this thread really interesting.

Deer and birds are often around me, but like people in city scapes, I omit them in the landscape.
There’s something tacky about portraying deer and other animals in art - I grew up with string-art and velvet paintings in New Brunswick. Jacking deer was a passtimje, but also a necessity for some as a source of a winter’s worth of meat.

Depicting animals, especially by people who grew up in the suburban/ urban experience so often found here in Canada ( not that I’m making any assumtions about any of you and where you grew up!!!) is kind of sweet. I don’t see it any different =than me going up to Algonquin Park every summer and painting my idea of the pretty northern, pristine landscape. It is a potent form of nostalgia that I have for an environment I both remember from my past in New Brunswick surrounded by trees and a form of nostalgia for these natural things which are disappearing very quickly before me.

As for them being trends? Maybe we are reacting more than we know to our envirnomental breaking down…m uch more violently than we can even put into words.

A couple of years ago ( SPring 2006?) Border Crossings mag did a whole issue dealing with Animals, I\m going to revisit it and see if it makes any more sense to me now than it did then ( I was finishing my thesis at that point and unless it was hockey or landsacpe it kinda went by me…)

Any thoughts?

From Robert D. Kaplan’s The Ends of the Earth (1996: 4-5):

From the perspective of space, where there is no gravity, there is also no up or down. The maps of the world that show north as up are not necessarily objective. Scan the map with the south pole on top and you see the world entirely differently. The Mediterranean basin is no longer the focal point, lost, as it is, near the bottom of the globe. North America loses its continental width - and thus its majesty - as it narrows ‘northward’ into the atrophied limb of Central America toward the center of your field of vision. South America and Africa stand out. But South America keeps narrowing toward the Antarctic nothingness to the top, insufficiently connected to the other continental bodies.

Africa, alas, is the inescapable center: Equidistant between the South and North poles, lying flat across the equator, with the earth’s warmest climate, hospitable to the emergence of life in countless forms - three quarters of its surface lies within the tropics. Africa looms large in the middle of the vision field, connected to Eurasia through the Middle East. This map, with south at the top, shows why humankind emerged in Africa, why it was from Africa that our species may have begun the settlement of the planet. Africa is the mother continent to which we all ultimately belong, from where human beings acquired their deepest genetic traits. ‘We are all Africans under the skin,’ says anthropologist Christopher Stringer. Africa is nature write large. As Ben Okri, a Nigerian novelist and poet, writes:

We are the miracles that God made
To taste the bitter fruit of Time.

From Wikipedia: ‘The term Mediterranean derives from the Latin mediterraneus, “inland” (medius, “middle” + terra, “land, earth”). To the ancient Romans, the Mediterranean was the center of the earth as they knew it.’

The Roman Mediterranean is our Pacific. The sea that takes up half the planet, in the middle of the Earth.