My last two visits to the AGO have been pleasant and productive. I didn't go for the art on either occasion. Instead, I swung by the gift shop to buy notebooks, sketchbooks, pencils and erasers at sale prices that barely registered a blip on my debit card. Sadly, I won't be able to say the same for Abstract Expressionist New York, the AGO's quite likely stunning new show that opens May 28. All of the work on display comes from the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and offers a chance to swoon over pieces by, among others, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hoffman, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Well, swooning over Rothko may be too mild a reaction. How about prostrating yourself?
But if you do I won't be there to see you. The AGO wants 25 bucks to get in to the exhibition. Where on earth does the AGO think I and others like me who get by on not much can find that sort of cash? Has everyone down there on Dundas West gone nuts?
Of course, such a large admission fee speaks to a common cultural problem, not just in Hogtown but across Canada: too little support for the arts (but uncounted billions for fighter jets) that leaves the barely solvent unable to take part in any significant cultural event, and the masterworks on show at the AGO are certainly that. Art, literature, theatre and the rest are for everyone, as the cultural policies of many countries attest. As a consequence, life in those places is signally different from life in Canada. They seem to have taken to heart, as we have not, the phrase from the great French Canadian writer Gabrielle Roy that appears on our $20 bills. Take a magnifying glass and give it a read.
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