Rethinking the White Cube

How galleries are preparing for the pandemic’s uncertain future.

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Blue Reflection, painted in 2005 by Victoria artist Shushan Egoyan, is one of some 40 works in the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria’s latest exhibition, the first since its closure in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

The gallery – like the Winnipeg Art Gallery, which re-opened May 5, and the Vancouver Art Gallery, which waited until June 15 – is back in business, but with new protocols that will alter the visitor experience, perhaps forever. 

Things like ticketed and controlled entry (20 people at a time in the case of Victoria), one-way passageways and guides who remind viewers not to bunch up are helping prevent the potential spread of the COVID-19 virus. “And, of course, we have hand sanitizers all over the place,” says Jon Tupper, the director of the Victoria gallery, which reopened May 19 with free admission until July 5.

In the wake of income losses incurred by long closures, Canadians can expect to see more shows curated from gallery collections. That includes Celebrating the AGGV Collection, the exhibition that features the painting by Egoyan, the mother of famed filmmaker, Atom. The yearlong show also includes works by Emily Carr and A.Y. Jackson.

“We have a collection of 22,000 works, so it gives us an opportunity to go into our vaults and pull some things out,” says Tupper. 

Such shows offer the public a chance to view rarely seen works and revisit old favourites. At best, they interrogate the past, raising interesting questions about issues of contemporary concern, like colonialism, systemic racism and the aesthetics of power.

For instance, at the Vancouver Art Gallery, interim director Daina Augaitis is overseeing a reopening that features The Tin Man Was a Dreamer: Allegories, Poetics and Performances of Power. On view until Nov. 1, the exhibition features some 70 works drawn largely from the gallery’s collection to examine how power is constructed and enacted. It includes works by everyone from American photographers Harold Edgerton and Robert Frank to Vancouver artists like Fred Herzog, Douglas Coupland and Marian Penner Bancroft.

A second show, lineages and land bases, also relies on works from the gallery’s permanent collection to critique Western assumptions that nature and culture are two distinct realms, a concept that shaped art and identity in the 20th century. 

“I do think we have to cut some of our costs by working close to home,” says Augaitis. “We’re also running our exhibitions a little bit longer (extended from three months to five) since we can’t have as many people through the door at any one time. What you won’t be able to have, unfortunately, are the big openings, where we used to have thousands of people. That’s something we’re trying to figure out.”

The pandemic is leading to a new, less communal approach, says Tupper. “It’s not a social experience. It’s an intimate individual experience right now. That’s what we’re seeing. That’s the future. That’s what’s going to happen.”

Galleries – and the people who design and build them – have also been thinking about how to retrofit their physical spaces so staff and visitors are safer.

A century ago when the Spanish flu and other contagious diseases ravaged the world, architects faced a similar quandary: How do you bring large groups of people together yet keep them safe?

They responded with big open spaces that had lots of windows so fresh air and sunlight could penetrate stuffy interiors. This health-oriented focus helped spawn the birth of the Modernist movement with its emphasis on clean, unadorned lines and stark white walls. The stripped-down white cube has been the gallery standard ever since.

But recent experiences with COVID-19 suggests larger spaces may not be enough. The pandemic has forced designers to pay closer attention to what’s inside the white cube – and think about using virus-resistant materials such as copper and stainless steel, as well as hands-free technology, like automatic doors and voice-activated elevators.

Vancouver architect John Patkau, who designed both the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, B.C., and the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver, says technology is the way to go.  

“The main entrance to the Audain has a photo sensor that opens the door for you so you walk right in,” he says. “You actually have to push the door to get into the galleries, but they could easily be retrofitted to photo sensors and open automatically for you. That’s certainly not an issue.” 

Several new galleries are coming on stream in Western Canada. Winnipeg’s Inuit Art Centre, a sinuous 40,000-square-foot building next to the Winnipeg Art Gallery will house a 13,000-piece collection of Inuit art, the world’s largest. It is nearing completion and is expected to open this winter. 

Meanwhile, Victoria has received civic approval for its expansion, which will add 40 per cent more exhibition space to its present footprint. Fundraising is continuing and construction has not yet begun. But adjustments may be needed as more is learned about how to control  contagion.

“We were state of the art when we designed the building,” says Tupper. “But we certainly have to consider viruses and the spread of viruses.”

The Vancouver Art Gallery’s proposed new home, delayed due to funding challenges, may provide an opportunity for bold steps. 

Architect David Dove works with Perkins and Will, the Vancouver firm collaborating with the building’s lead architect, Switzerland’s Herzog and de Meuron. Although the design was finalized in 2015, Dove says the pandemic will probably spur a rethink about how to keep visitors apart from each other.

“I think there will be another filter that we will have to overlay on the design, a detailed design phase incorporating hand-sanitizing stations, but also those kinds of measurements of distance from wall to viewer and from viewer back to the area feeding them.” 

As for emerging trends, Dove says there’s a push to expand the health-oriented focus of the early 20th century to include mental well being as well as physical health.

“It might be an opportunity to break out of the indoor environment and go outside,” he says, referring to the new gallery’s courtyard. “You might go from a hermetically sealed, contained space and the next space you go to is outdoors, where you have fresh air moving in and out. The idea is to take us back to a more natural, almost organic way of living. Taking us back to nature is a big part of that.”

Another example of innovations being considered by global designers is adding smaller rooms to the side of large exhibition halls so visitors can rest and relax. 

Patkau says the pandemic – and the lessons learned about social distancing and other ways to stem contagion – has been a wake-up call for both galleries and the architects who design them. 

“Even if we are lucky enough to find a vaccine and solve this problem, it has demonstrated to everybody that it’s a problem that can exist unpredictably without warning.” ■ 

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