The Separation of Church & Strata

For a city whose leaders are obsessed with cultivating a 'world-class' image, Vancouver has some odd ways of showing it. The latest unenlightened stumble comes from the Vancouver Parks Board and their decision to dismantle Dennis Oppenheim's renowned sculpture Device to Root Out Evil from it current Coal Harbour location. For those of you scoring at home, this page loves public art: it gives cities a real sense of place and also provides a familiar comfort if the piece doesn't take itself too seriously, like Oldenburg and Van Bruggen's Spoonbridge & Cherry at the Walker Sculpture Garden in Minneapolis. The upside-down church of Device to Root Out Evil reminded this page of the opening of the Wizard of Oz when Kansas is uprooted by a tornado, just like how the world view of many Vancouverites who emigrated from the Prairies (like this page) was uprooted by the diversity and intensity of our new surroundings.

Oppenheim's piece, commissioned in 2006 for the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale, more than serves its function as public art: it's interesting to look at and gets people talking, so why should the Parks Board remove it? Does this upside-down church really offend the religious sensitivities of people, or does it just make Coal Harbour condominium owners and their NIMBY Strata Councils, obsessed with the resale value of their properties, a little nervous? For that matter, why is it the Parks Board making this decision? What do people charged with maintaining bike paths and swimming pools know about art? Do we let the Athletic Commission pick the season for the Vancouver Opera?

If the Parks Board wants to address a quality of life issue surrounding a church, perhaps they should look on Great Northern Way between Main Street and Clark Drive, where St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church is building a massive expansion of their cathedral/private school. The complex takes up an entire block, and blocks out the North Shore Mountains view formerly enjoyed by residents on the south side of East 5th Avenue, who in fact, may not be Catholic and perhaps object to an overt display of religion dominating their view. By comparison, Oppenheim's piece is about the size of a bus and Stanley Park is still visible to the Starbucks Landed Gentry from their overpriced windows.

When somebody says that we should 'clean up this town', I don't think it means that we clean the city out of any sense of creativity or personality.