Results tagged “frankgehry”

Sarah Lazarovic—curator of the garage-based Montrose Portrait Gallery of Canada—painted a portrait of a Torontonian every day in 2008. And each Monday, concluding today, we featured one of those portraits here.

                     

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2008--the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months, with one hero and one villain selected by each participating staff member. On Christmas Day: the heroes. On Boxing Day: the villains. And next week, cast your vote to determine the Superhero and Supervillain of the year.

If a Canadian is someone who gets excited when an American television show mentions Canada, then a Torontonian might be someone who gets excited when an international newspaper mentions Toronto. (And yes, we know about that list.)

In the annals of Toronto’s long and much discussed inferiority complex, the transformed AGO may go down as the moment we decided to just get over it. Not because the new gallery will become an architectural icon (it is wonderful, but in a subtle way) and not because it houses a collection of international significance (Toronto does not possess the kind of financial capital required to build one), but because it will make us realize that those are not the only tickets to greatness. The building is a perfect distillation of that very Canadian mix of beauty and restraint, and because it is so good at striking that balance, because it makes that balance look so appealing, it will hopefully encourage us all to stop equating excellence with monumentalism. Toronto is not, we constantly hear, a “statement” city; we do things quietly around here. The new AGO challenges the underlying assumption that that’s somehow a fallback position.

Palace of the End, Judith Thompson's most recent play, is not only her most political work, it is also her best. As most auditioning actors in this country have discovered, Thompson's greatest strength has always been her monologues, and in this piece, she uses that strength to its full advantage. In fact, she dispenses with character interaction altogether and breaks her show into three long monologues, each spoken by someone who has been greatly affected by the political situation in Iraq from Saddam's rise to power to the present. Interestingly, while Thompson has created the text for the show, she has not created fictional characters. Though they are not credited as such in the program, the following becomes clear: Maev Beaty's "American Soldier" is none other than Abu Ghraib's favourite dishonourable dischargee, Private Lynndie England; Julian Richings' "British Microbiologist and Weapons Inspector" is WMD whistle-blower and Thom Yorke muse David Kelly; Arsinée Khanjian's "Iraqi Mother" is the less notorious Nehrjas al-Saffarh, a woman who was tortured along with her children during Saddam's reign and died in the first Gulf War.

Torontoist is one of fourteen cities in the worldwide Gothamist network. Once a week, the editors of each site—from LAist to Londonist—compile some of their most interesting posts into a brief blurb. It's Elsewhere In The Ist-A-Verse, and it appears, across the network, every Sunday.

Photo by marco 2000.

Project manager for the Art Gallery of Ontario's Frank Gehry-designed transformation Mike Mahoney stands on the site of the Galleria Italia, a 450-foot-long sculpture promenade rising above Dundas. Enclosed by moulded glass hanging from swooping beams of Douglas fir, this will become one of the city's most iconic architectural features and a postcard favourite.

There are many ways to chart a city's history. One can dig into the city archives, flip through photographs or listen to its citizens tell their stories about its daily life. The evolution of a city can also be traced through a vehicle that drives people crazy when it originally appears, but forms a valuable record when seen with distance: advertising.

Somehow, the world of -ists managed to make it through the week despite news that Jen & Vince broke up.

Torontoist visits the site of a new Frank Gehry structure, stalks "the elusive Bahamas streetcar", and watches Tom Green get surgery.

Does this city ever get enough of Frank Gehry? After all, there is such thing as too much Gehry (Re: the future of the AGO...) The question becomes, when will the Gehry love bucket overflow and flood Toronto, killing everything in its path? The AGO's expected opening is in 2008.

Oh man! This week’s big news in films comes from a crazy place called Vancouver??? We know! Torontoist have never heard of it either, but apparently it’s in Canada! Wild! So anyway, it’s clearly going to be an exciting place to be come September, as the famous for being terrible German director Uwe Boll wants to have a fight with YOU. Yes, you! As long as in the year of 2005 you’ve written two articles insulting him (and you’re in-shape, male and weigh between 64 and 86 kilograms) you can, apparently, fight him in a boxing ring as an extra in his big screen remake of Postal, the rubbish and intentionally controversial shoot-em-up from Running with Scissors.

Little known fact... Frank Gehry hates using computers. He never used one, and likely never will. Gehry Partners LLP, however, has pioneered the use of computers in architecture and design. Nothing built by Gehry Partners LLP over the past fifteenish years would have been possible without their methods and technology.

Houstonist reports on cross-dressing thieves and undressing educators this week. A Peeping Tom defends himself with a papaya and an outraged onlooker asks Ken Lay, "TATER TOTS OR FRIES?" Also, FEMA wants it's money back.

Frank Gehry's return to Toronto touches on a few of the neuroses that makes this city unique. There's the dynamic of the successful Canadian, going abroad to conquer the world and returning to his humble origins. In Gehry's case redesigning the first art gallery he visited and one just a few blocks away from where he lived with his grandmother. There were no hard questions from the audience, when Gehry gave a press conference at the AGO this morning for the launch of the exhibit Frank Gehry Art + Architecture (opens Feb. 18).

Like it or lump it, Toronto-born architect Frank Gehry's AGO is calling. For Gehry non-fans, the redesign represents the typical over-the-top, singular view that Gehry is famous for. His AGO - while consciously not affecting the skyline - does change the make-up of the area without much public consult. For instance, the above Transformation Model shows the Ark-like extension over the sidewalk. This, as we understand it, presents a bit of a pickle for public space advocates: while the AGO is a public institution, their encroachment onto the sidewalk of Dundas Street could be seen as intrusive.