NEXT Gallery

Location
Victoria, Canada
Client
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
Date
Ongoing
Size
–
Budget
–
Status
In Progress

The NEXT Gallery Project presents complex renewal and expansion of one of Canada’s foremost public art institutions. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria has been a major art centre of British Columbia’s Capital Regions District and Vancouver Island for almost 70 years. It collection consists of more then 20,000 works of art and includes Modern Art, Canadian Historic and Contemporary Art, Native Art and one of the most significant collections of Asian Art.

In response to the clients evolving needs we developed design vision for the project to become a living museum and cultural community centre that is transformative to the museum typology and institution itself. Our design vision is for it to function as a cultural forum, through the addition of major new public program spaces that link newly defined public exterior plazas and gardens to a multi-programmable lobby, multifunction event spaces and adaptive galleries. New exhibition areas allow for a multiplicity of future curatorial possibilities beyond the exhibition of visual arts, inviting spaces to be appropriated for education, learning and interaction, as well as inviting new media art and the yet unknown imaginations of future art communities.

The design connects past and future through ‘surgical’ adaptive reuse of the exiting buildings, and to link the historic Spencer Mansion proudly into a contemporary place that invite reflection about past, presence and future. The re-conceptualized and actualized spaces serve for the future exhibition of the permanent collections, temporary exhibits, performance / lecture events, dedicated education and research centre and significantly expanded and more interactive art storage.