Vancouver Art Gallery gifted greater than 800 images by Stephen Shore – The Art Newspaper

The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) will now have one of many largest museum collections of photographer Stephen Shore’s work on the earth, following a present of greater than 800 items, introduced on Thursday (26 February).

The donation got here from the Chan household, who additionally gave C$40m ($30m) to the VAG in 2019 towards a then-planned new constructing designed by the structure agency Herzog and de Meuron. In recognition of the household’s present, the brand new gallery was to be referred to as the Chan Centre for the Visual Arts. That constructing plan that was scrapped in 2024 as a result of hovering prices

The Chan household donation of Shore’s challenge Uncommon Places (1973-81) establishes the gallery as a house to one of the vital complete representations of the acclaimed sequence on the earth. Selections from the present works will go on view on 27 March within the gallery’s everlasting assortment galleries. While the Polygon Gallery hosted the touring retrospective The Biographical Landscape: The Photography of Stephen Shore, 1968-1993 20 years in the past (2005-06), this would be the first devoted exhibition of Uncommon Places in Vancouver.

“We are profoundly grateful to the Chan family for their extraordinary generosity and their commitment to making Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places accessible to all,” Eva Respini, the gallery’s interim chief government and curator at massive, mentioned in an announcement. “Few bodies of work have so decisively changed the course of photography.”

Underlining town’s birthing of the “Vancouver school” of photoconceptualism, a motion related to artists like Jeff Wall and Rodney Graham, Respini added that “Vancouver has long occupied a significant place in the international history of photography, home to artists whose work has shaped global discourse. To hold this series in depth allows us to place Shore’s vision in meaningful dialogue with that legacy, deepening both the history we tell and the experience we offer our audiences.”

This present is the most important donation of US images to the VAG since a monumental donation of 556 images by Harry Callahan (1912-99) in 2014 by the Montreal-based Larry and Cookie Rossy Family Foundation.

Shore started his profession at age six, when his uncle gave him a Kodak photograph processing package. The Museum of Modern Art in New York bought three of his images when he was solely 14. He photographed the artwork and social scene at Andy Warhol’s Factory from 1965 to 1967 and, at age 23, turned solely the second dwelling photographer (after Alfred Stieglitz) to have a solo exhibition on the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Shore’s Uncommon Places—a landmark sequence within the historical past of latest images—was taken over the course of a number of highway journeys via North America between 1973 and 1981. In it, Shore capturedquotidian treasures: road scenes, fuel stations, motel rooms and portraits of locals with what a VAG spokesperson calls “remarkable clarity and vivid colour”. Originally revealed as a e-book in 1982, Uncommon Places performed a pivotal position in establishing the significance of color images as a high-quality artwork kind.

“Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places is clearly a defining work in the history of photography, but on a more personal level, it’s art that’s a joy to engage with,” Christian Chan mentioned on behalf of his household. “Our family has had the true privilege of living with these very special works at home, and at the office, for many years, and it’s only affirmed our belief that these important photographs should be accessible to the public, so that visitors can discover the magic Shore reveals within the everyday.”

“I am excited for audiences to experience this influential body of work in Canada,” says Siobhan McCracken Nixon, the gallery’s affiliate curator of British Columbian artwork, who’s curating the upcoming show of Shore’s photographs. “Seen together, the photographs illuminate the evolution of Shore’s approach, from his formal precision to his sustained engagement with the everyday landscape. For the first time, the exhibition foregrounds his photographs made in Canada, offering a fresh perspective on the series and a rare opportunity for audiences to connect with these iconic works.”