The new Polygon Gallery,
which focuses on photography,
film, and video.Volleyball
players on
Kitsilano
Beach.
TRAVELANDLEISURE.COM 93
Vancouver area. Around the same time, the
Chinese economy grew hot. Soon, wealthy
mainland Chinese were moving there, too, and
investing in Vancouver real estate.
What happens when that kind of money flows
into a city? Does it trickle down to feed local
culture and support budding artists and creators?
Or does it have a globalist Baby Huey effect,
squashing all that’s weird and interesting? On my
visits to Vancouver, I searched its galleries and
restaurants, its parks and cafés, for something
authentic and surprising between the postcard
views and the gleaming glass towers.V
ICTORIA, JEANNE, AND I began our
quest in Mount Pleasant, a bohemian
neighborhood that spreads itself like a quilt over
the hillside south of False Creek. Mount Pleasant
is home to street art painted for past editions of
the Vancouver Mural Festival, which takes place
every August. The pieces have the bulbous
shapes, cartoonish lines, and vibrant colors of
graffiti art, often with indigenous or Asian motifs.
We strolled from mural to mural, admiring the
leafy yards along the way. “Let’s move here!” said
Jeanne, after we ate delicious croissants at LibertyBakery. Victoria and I nodded vigorously. This
would be a good place to act out our lifelong
dream of retiring together in an old-lady
commune. Except maybe it wouldn’t. A few weeks
later, I told the Vancouver writer Mandy Len
Catron about our fantasy. She didn’t scoff—she’s
from the American South, and her manners are
impeccable. “I’ve seen a lot of people I love leave,”
she said. “For anyone in the arts, it’s impossible.”
Vic and Jeanne and I stopped at Catriona
Jeffries, possibly the top contemporary gallery in
Vancouver. An unassuming door gave way to a
pebbled courtyard dotted by honey locust trees.
We slipped into the lofty, gorgeous space, which
hews to the familiar formula of internationally
significant white-box galleries. There we found
several of the major Canadian conceptual and
abstract artists Catriona Jeffries represents, like
Rebecca Brewer, whose giant, ethereal felted-
wool panels made us think of sheep.
We found an edgier and more unexpected art
scene a mile or so away in Chinatown. The Rennie
Museum, a private collection owned by real estate
marketer Bob Rennie, contains two main
galleries, each four stories high, housed in a
19th-century structure known as the Wing Sang
Building. Down the center runs a rough brick
passageway that has been incorporated into the
design. It’s a historical artifact, surreptitiously
built by locals to get around a racist ordinance
that restricted Chinese people from moving
around after dark.
We walked through the space with Darya
Kosilova, the museum’s engagement and education
coordinator. “This is the oldest building in
Chinatown,” she informed us, “and one of the
oldest in Vancouver. She explained that the Rennie
Museum seeks to honor the experience of
Vancouver’s Chinese community by collecting
work that focuses on identity and injustice from a
global array of artists—among them, Kerry James
Marshall, Yoko Ono, and Martin Creed. The largest
exhibition space was lined with Catherine Opie’s
700 Nimes Road, a suite of photos of Elizabeth
Taylor’s house. I wasn’t sure how they spoke to the
Chinese experience in Vancouver, but they did
strike me as a poignant meditation on longing.
A walk around Chinatown revealed not just its
fractious history, but challenging present-day