The tenth anniversary of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Institute of Asian Art—the gallery’s formal commitment to Asian art programming—was marked last week by a name change and C$1.6m ($1.1m) in donations earmarked for the “amplification of Asian Art”.
The renamed Centre for Global Asias was partly inspired by the author Pico Iyer’s notion that “everywhere is so made up of everywhere else” and “home is not just the place where you happen to be born. It’s the place where you become yourself.”
At a celebration of the anniversary, Sirish Rao, the gallery’s senior director of public engagement and learning, addressed a crowd of patrons, artists and diplomats that included the local Turkish and Indian consuls. “We recognise the many Asias that exist, within the geography of Asia itself and in the global diaspora,” Rao said. “There are Asias yet to be imagined and yet to come. The Centre for Global Asias will be a home for a pluralism of ideas, perspectives and artistic disciplines.”
This amplification of the Asian experience into a cosmopolitan, transnational one reflects Vancouver roughly half-Asian population—including 28% Chinese, 7 % South Asian, 6% Filipino and 2% Iranian. The gallery’s traditional programming focus and funding base has typically been Chinese but that is expanding with a wider embrace of South and West Asian art.
The Centre for Global Asias Fund of C$1.6m to support the gallery’s commitment to Asian art programming is supported by Chinese Canadians individuals and organisations including Roger Lee, Xiang (Shawn) He and Yu Jue (Sylvia) Zhang, the artist Henry Wang and the Chen Family, and Visas Consulting Group—which specialises in helping Chinese nationals gain citizenship in the West via investments. Intriguingly, as foreign buyers’ real estate investments have ebbed, art acquisitions by Chinese collectors have been increasing.
“We are incredibly grateful for the unwavering support of these individuals and organisations, whose generosity will ensure the continued impact, growth and future of the Gallery’s Asian art programming,” said Anthony Kiendl, the gallery’s chief executive and executive director. “Our vision is to profoundly affect the ways in which audiences in this country come to recognise and celebrate the cultures of Asia and to facilitate a deeper understanding between cultures.”
Artist Eric Cheung performs Iye, in collaboration with Cristian Gonzalez at the tenth anniversary celebration of the Institute of Asian Art, now the Centre for Global Asias, November 2024 Photo: Vancouver Art Gallery
The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation, which supported the launch of the Institute of Asian Art with the popular exhibition The Forbidden City: Inside the Court of China’s Emperors, has bestowed a C$84,000 ($60,000) grant to support Montréal-based artist Karen Tam in a year-long role as artist researcher at the gallery. Working closely with the gallery’s senior curator Diana Freundl, Tam’s research will “examine the lives and careers of Chinese artists who travelled to Canada in the early 20th century”, according to the gallery. This is the first time the gallery has received a research-specific grant focused on Chinese artists.
Additionally, the renowned Chinese artist and scholar Zheng Shengtian, who opened one of the first art galleries specialising in contemporary Chinese art outside of China in Vancouver in the early 1990s, announced last week that he will donate his entire archive to the Centre for Global Asias.
In the last decade the gallery has exhibited West Asian artists like Parviz Tanavoli, whose Poets, Locks, Cages (2023), was the first major exhibition in Canada dedicated to the acclaimed Iranian sculptor. In the crowd at the anniversary were the Vancouver-based artist Paul Wong, whose neon sculpture Windows 97 (1997) was acquired by the gallery this year; the Lebanese Canadian artist Marie Khouri, whose stylised Arabic calligraphy sculptures graced the gallery’s rotunda until recently; and representatives of the Djavad Mowafaghian Foundation, which sponsored the Tanavoli exhibition.
The renewed commitment to and funding for Asian art comes as the gallery also pursues plans (and pursues donations) for a long-awaited and ambitious new building, designed by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron and now estimated to cost C$600m ($444.6m).