spaced
Active Member
The front facade is starting to get interesting.
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TrickyRicky
Senior Member
That glass is kind of interesting from a geeky technical point of view. Shaping the glass is relatively easy but what is interesting is how they were able to temper it to a degree that would allow it to pass code for an overhead application. It is a routine procedure for a flat panel but with those undulations how can you control the rate of heating and cooling in order to induce the proper stress distributions? Does each panel then have to be subjected to testing to prove it's stability?
MetroMan
Senior Member
The front facade is starting to get interesting.
The façade's skeleton is certainly interesting but look further up: the spiral staircase is phenomenal!
Jdot
Active Member
It's a shame that noone will see that spiral staircase unless you are in it.
mysteryman
Active Member
there will always be the smaller one on the south side
spaced
Active Member
^
Plus you'll be able to see it through the glass roof in Walker Court.
Plus you'll be able to see it through the glass roof in Walker Court.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
The original design for the staircase was much more impressive - it was all open air, enclosed in a 4s glass box instead of being an enclosed "tube" that spiral upwards. I have a feeling some of the architectural virtuosity is now lost as a result - you can't see directly up, for one.
AoD
AoD
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Free admission October 6th and 7th, from 10 am to 5:30 pm.
AndreaPalladio
Senior Member
What will there be to see? The Chuck Close exhibition is gone. Is the V&A stuff still there? If not, it will be walking around the empty special exhibtions room, and the grafitti'd up Henry Moore room.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
Last call for: the Medieval and Renaissance stuff from the V&A; the Bernini's; the contemporary art from India; the Dundas Collection ( I hope the AGO gets to keep all of it! ) ... and some drecky Ken Danby painting of a goalie.
Jdot
Active Member
Where are the outward curving bits on the windsheild? From that last pic, it appears that all glass will bend towards the building. Wasnt the end bits supposed to "peel back"?
MetroMan
Senior Member
Those are coming later. They're merely add ons and have no function other than cosmetic. The parts that were built so far will enclose the new sculpture gallery.
p5connex
Active Member
I agree AoD- the earlier renditions of the staircase were much more appealing and impressive- they way it looks now- oh well, overall i am impressed with the way the building is turning out..
p5
p5
MetroMan
Senior Member
^ I wouldn't worry. I trust Frank Gehry. Once they clad the stairs in the blue titanium, the covered part will disappear.
mysteryman
Active Member
Globe and Mail
The AGO's closing gambit
As the art gallery finishes the enormous task of storing 9,000 priceless works of art, it is also looking ahead to a new vision. Will closing its doors pay off for the museum, asks Val Ross, or does it risk losing its audience?
VAL ROSS
October 6, 2007
The Art Gallery of Ontario closes tomorrow to complete the construction of its $254-million Frank Gehry facelift. No one knows when North America's eighth-largest art museum might reopen.
Raising their voices to be heard amid the staccato hammering, staff speculate that it will be midsummer, 2008. About 50 service staff who have been laid off from the AGO's ticket sales, membership, retail, food and janitorial services say they don't know when or if they might be recalled.
It's a huge risk, this closing for an indefinite length of time - not only might they lose seasoned staff, but they might also lose public interest. "We'll have to work hard to be in people's minds," admits Matthew Teitelbaum, the AGO's director and chief executive officer. Nor is the AGO opening a temporary gallery space, as New York's Museum of Modern Art did during its recent reconstruction. Instead, the AGO is counting on projects such as its involvement with the LuminaTO festival in June, 2008, to keep its image alive.
The immediate cause for closing is that the gallery's temporary entrance on McCaul Street will be cordoned off to make way for the next phase of construction. Of course, the AGO could build a new public entrance at the back. But money is tight - the federal Conservatives never delivered on the Liberals' promise, before losing the 2007 election, to give the AGO a $15-million top-up. Behind the scenes, the AGO marketing people are desperately trying to retain the financial support of existing members during the closing, with offers of deals on admission to other museums and at local restaurants. It is even mailing appeals to artists - hardly a high-earning demographic.
Print Edition - Section Front
Enlarge Image
The keen desire to stay on budget is one reason why the AGO has been cutting back for a while now. Late in 2003, it closed its Canadian galleries and scaled back its education department. In January, 2005, it announced that it would be closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
You had only to stand at the temporary entrance on McCaul on any weekday morning and watch staff turning away crestfallen tourists and baffled locals with a "Sorry, we don't open till noon," to realize that the place hasn't been fully accessible for a while.
Will the fully closed gamble pay off? Will the public return? It took the Royal Ontario Museum 19 years to restore attendance levels to those it enjoyed in 1979 before closing for two years of construction. "If you're asking if we are risking not engaging our public when we reopen," Mr. Teitelbaum says, "the answer is no."
But to make that happen, for the next however-many months, the troops behind the hoardings on Dundas Street must engage in two parallel strategic operations.
One has been in process since 2005 - the shifting, to one of three temporary on-site storage locations, of about 9,000 priceless works of art, many of unusual shapes, such as Arabesque, a bronze Degas dancer, and a 19th-century Nigerian (Ekoi) mask of wood, painted skin, metal and bone.
Barry Simpson, registrar of collections, went through this same process in 1988, the last time the AGO underwent a massive rebuild. This time, he says, it's more difficult, because the collection is bigger and includes larger objects - such as Frank Thiel's Stadt 5-23-A(Berlin), a framed chromogenic print on Plexiglas, which is 1.62 metres by a whopping 4.93 metres.
Moving even the smaller works is labour-intensive. Last Wednesday, it took five white-gloved workers to uncrate Picasso's Seated Woman (130.8 cm by 97.8 cm), which had been on loan to the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis. They then shifted it to a second crate and moved it to a newly created vault onsite. (Not all works require the vault treatment: Many are stored on hanging frames or specially constructed wooden shelves on vibration-proof pads, and sent to the galleries where once hung canvases by Augustus John and Emily Carr.)
The trickiest items to store, so far, have been the Thomson collection of 1,500 frames - gilt, wood, inlay - many of which had to be individually packed in bubble pack. And to pack up Claes Oldenburg's giant Soft Hamburger, whose canvas bun is susceptible to flaking, staff designed and built a wooden case that opens at the side for easy access, for whenever the Oldenburger is ready to be served again.
The other prong of the AGO staff's efforts is intellectual. Curators and exhibition designers are attempting nothing less than a new way of engaging ordinary people with the 65,000 items of the collection. For this, several galleries have been transformed into mission-command centres. "Don't say 'war rooms.' We try not to wage wars here," says Linda Milrod, senior project manager for Transformation AGO.
She hovers like a god above vast tables of Styrofoam models. There are several models for each floor of the renovated gallery; together, they represent 190,000 square feet of renovated space and 97,000 square feet of additional new space, including the new tower and Galleria Italia. The models' walls, maybe 10 cm high, are hung with replica art, reduced to postage-stamp size (or, in the case of a Paterson Ewen, playing-card size).
A big issue for planners, says Ms. Milrod, waving her hand over one model, is "adjacencies." If you put lead donor Ken Thomson's model ship collection on the lowest level, where do you put Thomson's European collection, given that the Thomson collection is supposed to stay together? It has gone in one floor above, next door to the AGO's other European art.
Therefore, the Thomson Canadiana goes above that. In fact, three-quarters of the second floor will be Canadian art, with special hubs for the Group of Seven, General Idea and other stars. "David Thomson is reviewing all these plans, so it may shift a bit," Ms. Milrod admits.
The adjacencies principle has curatorial staff thinking in revolutionary ways: Will visitors look at old works afresh when works from different periods are grouped in themes ("War," "Establishing and Questioning Authority")? What will happen to viewers' images of first peoples if, say, a 19th-century portrait of Zacharie Vincent (Last of the Hurons) by Antoine Plamondon is hung near a beaver-dam-inspired dress/sculpture by 21st-century aboriginal artist Rebecca Belmore?
If old brown academic landscapes are hung across from luminously coloured works by Impressionists, will people ponder on how these two different world views co-existed?
Installation planning is a work in progress, and changes are made every day, so these Styrofoam models have to be hardy. They are. I knock into one with my backpack, cringe - and thank the model-builders that the tiny Galleria Italia holds firm (it does not yet contain model sculptures, which is what the gallery overlooking Dundas will showcase).
Finally, Ms. Milrod's fingers walk through the new Canadian galleries, where one of Canada's most emblematic paintings, Tom Thomson's The West Wind, hangs in miniature on a Styrofoam wall. Here, Ms. Milrod's fingers pause. This is where, she suggests, visitors will stop and say, "Oh, yeah! I've missed you."
As the AGO staff labour behind the big white hoardings over the months ahead, that's the phrase they hope to hear.
The AGO's closing gambit
As the art gallery finishes the enormous task of storing 9,000 priceless works of art, it is also looking ahead to a new vision. Will closing its doors pay off for the museum, asks Val Ross, or does it risk losing its audience?
VAL ROSS
October 6, 2007
The Art Gallery of Ontario closes tomorrow to complete the construction of its $254-million Frank Gehry facelift. No one knows when North America's eighth-largest art museum might reopen.
Raising their voices to be heard amid the staccato hammering, staff speculate that it will be midsummer, 2008. About 50 service staff who have been laid off from the AGO's ticket sales, membership, retail, food and janitorial services say they don't know when or if they might be recalled.
It's a huge risk, this closing for an indefinite length of time - not only might they lose seasoned staff, but they might also lose public interest. "We'll have to work hard to be in people's minds," admits Matthew Teitelbaum, the AGO's director and chief executive officer. Nor is the AGO opening a temporary gallery space, as New York's Museum of Modern Art did during its recent reconstruction. Instead, the AGO is counting on projects such as its involvement with the LuminaTO festival in June, 2008, to keep its image alive.
The immediate cause for closing is that the gallery's temporary entrance on McCaul Street will be cordoned off to make way for the next phase of construction. Of course, the AGO could build a new public entrance at the back. But money is tight - the federal Conservatives never delivered on the Liberals' promise, before losing the 2007 election, to give the AGO a $15-million top-up. Behind the scenes, the AGO marketing people are desperately trying to retain the financial support of existing members during the closing, with offers of deals on admission to other museums and at local restaurants. It is even mailing appeals to artists - hardly a high-earning demographic.
Print Edition - Section Front
Enlarge Image
The keen desire to stay on budget is one reason why the AGO has been cutting back for a while now. Late in 2003, it closed its Canadian galleries and scaled back its education department. In January, 2005, it announced that it would be closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
You had only to stand at the temporary entrance on McCaul on any weekday morning and watch staff turning away crestfallen tourists and baffled locals with a "Sorry, we don't open till noon," to realize that the place hasn't been fully accessible for a while.
Will the fully closed gamble pay off? Will the public return? It took the Royal Ontario Museum 19 years to restore attendance levels to those it enjoyed in 1979 before closing for two years of construction. "If you're asking if we are risking not engaging our public when we reopen," Mr. Teitelbaum says, "the answer is no."
But to make that happen, for the next however-many months, the troops behind the hoardings on Dundas Street must engage in two parallel strategic operations.
One has been in process since 2005 - the shifting, to one of three temporary on-site storage locations, of about 9,000 priceless works of art, many of unusual shapes, such as Arabesque, a bronze Degas dancer, and a 19th-century Nigerian (Ekoi) mask of wood, painted skin, metal and bone.
Barry Simpson, registrar of collections, went through this same process in 1988, the last time the AGO underwent a massive rebuild. This time, he says, it's more difficult, because the collection is bigger and includes larger objects - such as Frank Thiel's Stadt 5-23-A(Berlin), a framed chromogenic print on Plexiglas, which is 1.62 metres by a whopping 4.93 metres.
Moving even the smaller works is labour-intensive. Last Wednesday, it took five white-gloved workers to uncrate Picasso's Seated Woman (130.8 cm by 97.8 cm), which had been on loan to the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis. They then shifted it to a second crate and moved it to a newly created vault onsite. (Not all works require the vault treatment: Many are stored on hanging frames or specially constructed wooden shelves on vibration-proof pads, and sent to the galleries where once hung canvases by Augustus John and Emily Carr.)
The trickiest items to store, so far, have been the Thomson collection of 1,500 frames - gilt, wood, inlay - many of which had to be individually packed in bubble pack. And to pack up Claes Oldenburg's giant Soft Hamburger, whose canvas bun is susceptible to flaking, staff designed and built a wooden case that opens at the side for easy access, for whenever the Oldenburger is ready to be served again.
The other prong of the AGO staff's efforts is intellectual. Curators and exhibition designers are attempting nothing less than a new way of engaging ordinary people with the 65,000 items of the collection. For this, several galleries have been transformed into mission-command centres. "Don't say 'war rooms.' We try not to wage wars here," says Linda Milrod, senior project manager for Transformation AGO.
She hovers like a god above vast tables of Styrofoam models. There are several models for each floor of the renovated gallery; together, they represent 190,000 square feet of renovated space and 97,000 square feet of additional new space, including the new tower and Galleria Italia. The models' walls, maybe 10 cm high, are hung with replica art, reduced to postage-stamp size (or, in the case of a Paterson Ewen, playing-card size).
A big issue for planners, says Ms. Milrod, waving her hand over one model, is "adjacencies." If you put lead donor Ken Thomson's model ship collection on the lowest level, where do you put Thomson's European collection, given that the Thomson collection is supposed to stay together? It has gone in one floor above, next door to the AGO's other European art.
Therefore, the Thomson Canadiana goes above that. In fact, three-quarters of the second floor will be Canadian art, with special hubs for the Group of Seven, General Idea and other stars. "David Thomson is reviewing all these plans, so it may shift a bit," Ms. Milrod admits.
The adjacencies principle has curatorial staff thinking in revolutionary ways: Will visitors look at old works afresh when works from different periods are grouped in themes ("War," "Establishing and Questioning Authority")? What will happen to viewers' images of first peoples if, say, a 19th-century portrait of Zacharie Vincent (Last of the Hurons) by Antoine Plamondon is hung near a beaver-dam-inspired dress/sculpture by 21st-century aboriginal artist Rebecca Belmore?
If old brown academic landscapes are hung across from luminously coloured works by Impressionists, will people ponder on how these two different world views co-existed?
Installation planning is a work in progress, and changes are made every day, so these Styrofoam models have to be hardy. They are. I knock into one with my backpack, cringe - and thank the model-builders that the tiny Galleria Italia holds firm (it does not yet contain model sculptures, which is what the gallery overlooking Dundas will showcase).
Finally, Ms. Milrod's fingers walk through the new Canadian galleries, where one of Canada's most emblematic paintings, Tom Thomson's The West Wind, hangs in miniature on a Styrofoam wall. Here, Ms. Milrod's fingers pause. This is where, she suggests, visitors will stop and say, "Oh, yeah! I've missed you."
As the AGO staff labour behind the big white hoardings over the months ahead, that's the phrase they hope to hear.