Art Gallery of Alberta

Yesterday I took my whole family to the Art Gallery of Alberta.  The five of us travelled downtown on the train and spent a couple of hours in the gallery.  I really wanted to see the "Oil" exhibit by Edward Burtynsky.  This was a large display of enormous photographs that depicted mans dependence on oil, and what we've done to this earth to find it, extract it, process it, consume it, and the aftermath of all that.  The show was superb and I'm glad that we managed to see it before it ends... today.  In fact I wish I had gone sooner, and been able to spend a little more time with it.  But, with three young girls in tow, we had to hurry along because.... "this is really boring!"

There was also a display of Canadian Landscape paintings that was excellent.  I particularly liked to see original works by the Group of Seven, and an original Emily Carr.  I think my favorites were a couple of paintings by Lawren Harris and Frederick Varley.  Many of these pieces are in the permanent collection of the gallery, originally donated by the Poole family of Edmonton.

The girls had a lot of fun playing in the block room and building forts with all of the large foam building blocks.  It gave Margarit and I a little better opportunity to see some of the art as we took turns staying with the girls.

The building itself is quite a work of art.  I took along my little digital camera and although I was obviously not allowed to photograph any of the art, I did take a number of interesting snap shots of the building.  I realize that it took a lot of taxpayers money to pay for this project, but we can't approach everything strictly from a cost perspective.  Some things that provide long term interest and benefit to the people are worth spending a little more money on.  Our architecture here in Canada is boring enough, consisting mostly of utilitarian boxes for warehousing, retail and office.  We need to have a few showpieces that are more interesting, and this building is certainly one of them.  I like it!!

The Art Gallery of Alberta is well worth the price of admission and for anyone that has not had a chance to visit yet, I highly recommend it.