But is it a reckless, disrespectful travesty?
Federal and provincial funding totaling $26 million was announced yesterday for a new Art Gallery of Saskatchewan, to be wrapped around Saskatoon’s Persephone Theatre, creating a new arts hub for the city. The plan is controversial, though. It would replace Saskatoon’s existing Mendel Art Gallery, which is housed in an admired 1964 modernist building, and was largely financed by donations from the meat-packing fortune of the late Fred Mendel. “Moving the Mendel would indeed be a great travesty,” said Terry Graff, it’s former head, now director of Fredericton’s respected Beaverbrook Art Gallery, “demonstrating the city’s cultural amnesia, lack of vision, recklessness with taxpayers’ money and great disrespect for local heritage heritage and founder Fred Mendel’s significant cultural legacy.”