Welcome to, Vancouver "We are a World Class City tooo!!!" BC.

I’ve been reading a number of articles on Vancouver artist Jeff Wall’s
retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.  A passage from,
New Yorkers clamber over Vancouver's Wall in the Georgia Straight
caught my eye.

   “ The CAS's Irwin sees the MoMA retrospective as a
   stepping stone  for Vancouver as a whole. “The high level of
   intellectual rigour at the core of many Vancouver artists' work
   is the legacy of Jeff Wall and his colleagues,” she told the
   Straight by e-mail. “I imagine curators and collectors from all
   over the world will pay even closer attention to what is
   happening in Vancouver because of this exhibition.”“
   
Vancouver has had a long history of seeking validation for its art scene
from elsewhere and statements like the one above still echo that
sentiment.

In the twenty years that I’ve lived here things have come a long way, but
for years now the whole arts community seems to have been sitting on
the verge of something greater.  The world seems to be far more aware
of the art scene in Vancouver than most of the people living here and I
think that is the final missing piece to bring it all together.  Vancouver
needs its own voice and not borrowed voices from elsewhere. We need
voices to stand up and say “Our work is good.”, not “They say our
work is good so it must be true”  We need to stop this, Vancouver
“we’re a world class city too!!!” mentality.