There has been back-and-forth talk for years about whether the Vancouver Art Gallery should move to a new site in order to construct a larger, more eye-catching art gallery in which to showcase more of the gallery's collection than can fit in the current building. The VAG moved to the old courthouse building where it is now in 1983 after Arthur Erickson, this city's most beloved architect, redesigned the building at a cost of $20 million dollars. Now the province has committed $50 million for the move and construction of a new building at a new location in the city -- however, $50 million seems like a low-ball estimate to me for what the VAG has in mind.

What they have in mind is a superstar architect designing a superstar building that will be twice as big as the current building. This is a surefire way, it seems, to build international attention to your gallery, as seen with Toronto's addition to the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum, both done by internationally renowned architects and the focus of much debate in Toronto.

The VAG has rejected a site at False Creek, and has their eyes set currently on the parking lot near the Queen Elizabeth Theatre -- the site of the Vancouver Olympics Livecity Downtown concert and pavilion grounds. The catch? The land is so valuable that the VAG may have to share it with (what else?) condominium buildings, which would definitely put a crimp in the VAG's plans to have a stand-alone architecturally eye-popping building. It's not surprising though, as Vancouver's cultural attractions are usually attached in some way to a condo tower through density transfers, so perhaps in some cynical way it is almost fitting for Vancouver's art gallery to be dependent on condo towers.

However, there are those that don't think the gallery should move to a new site, but should redevelop the site they are currently in and work to acquire a better collection. The argument for the VAG staying put is that the collection, while too large for the current location, is not yet "good" enough to be housed in a building twice its size -- also adding that the VAG hasn't broken even in the last two years of operation, apparently. Also, with the redesign of Robson Square and the drawing of tens of thousands of people for the Olympics to that area, it is argued that the VAG now has one of the hottest locations in the city.

Of course, there are upsides and downsides to both moving and staying. Perhaps the VAG's attendance would be greater given the attention a new architecturally interesting building would bring, regardless of how "good" the collection inside is seen to be. Or maybe the cost of that architecturally arresting building would be so large that the gallery would then have to forgo acquiring anything new to the collection, turning the art gallery's most interesting art into the building itself.

And then there is the risk of a hollowing out of the centre, as some city planners have suggested, if the art gallery moved out of its current spot. Vancouver does have a tendency to neglect its middle in favour of its edges -- perhaps because the edges are lined with seawalls, ocean and views of mountains -- but the new site is more central than the earlier proposed False Creek site and so I don't know if it warrants the fear of a hollowing out.

If the art gallery does move to this new site, the question that needs to be asked is what will happen to the old building? The courthouse is too culturally important to tear down, I would hope, and the interior design doesn't really lend itself to much besides another gallery of sorts with its winding linked rooms. Maybe the recently re-branded Museum of Vancouver (MOV) can find itself a new home in the old VAG building and move out of the space centre in Vanier Park. Or maybe another gallery will spring up to take the place of the old, but that seems unlikely with the air of arts cuts still saturating the atmosphere.

Whatever happens, I think most will agree that the steps of the current art gallery, one of the best gathering spots in the city -- whether it be for protests, zombie walks, or mass pillow fights and bike rides -- should be preserved.

Photo by The Blackbird in the BR Flickr Pool.