Posted Nov 8, 2013, 9:37 PM
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New light, new life for Carnegie Gallery in Dundas
(Hamilton Spectator, Jeff Mahoney, Nov 6 2013)
Standing in the lobby, it was good to see Nancy Gray lit up with the autumnal champagne-coloured light that the Carnegie's glass-clad atrium drank in, from a crisp morning sky.
It was just the other day. But it threw me back almost 10 years to another time when Nancy and I met, near this same spot, under different circumstances. Indeed, it was during one the gravest crises in the down-and-up life of what is perhaps Dundas's signature building.
At that time, 2005, I found Nancy distraught by the terrible news she'd just received. The newly amalgamated city had taken inventory of public heritage buildings in what were formerly its suburbs and decided to put the Carnegie Gallery building up for sale.
Thinking it a fait accompli, Nancy initially plunged herself into a state of reluctant resignation.
"I told myself, 'You've had 25 good years (the Carnegie Gallery was opened in 1980), and if it has to come to an end, it has to come to an end," says Nancy. "Then I paused and thought, 'But I want it to go on.'"
With all the fight she had left in her, Nancy joined with several other key players, including Councillor Russ Powers, to pull off one of the biggest turnarounds I've ever seen in a community institution as imperiled as the Carnegie was.
They formed a plan, involving all levels of government, to reconstitute the ownership and control of the building and gallery.
After an enormous and highly successful fundraising campaign, with matching government money, the Carnegie team found itself able to proceed with an impressive building renovations/expansion.
Now it's done — well, almost.
The results are spectacular. The most prominent feature is the steel, wood and glass atrium alluded to above, sandwiched handsomely between the old building and a new wall with perfectly matching brick.
The flanking wall helps frame the scope of the new within the tradition of the old, the wall's colour completing the synaptic connection with the original back of the building and its beautiful bay window, now paradoxically both interior and exterior. In fact, this play between ideas of interior and exterior is a theme running through the project.
Aside from the atrium there are many upgrades to the old interior — it's beautifully, sleekly laid out, with an additional entrance which re-exposes a great old window that had been hidden. There's a new elevator, a kitchen downstairs and more.
One of the strongest touches is the open office which pulls together the atrium and the old building. It straddles both spaces and looks out on the gondolas of lights and pipes that span the addition and at the far end, the globular bocce lights, seemingly suspended in mid air.
"There's not a lot left in the kitty but we're hoping to put in electric curtains" because there's so much light coming in through the atrium that, working in the new office, one almost needs "sun hats and sunglasses," says Nancy.
In the atrium lobby there's a rough sketch of the expansion plan mounted on a plaque, a transfer from the napkin on which architect Fred Vermuelen originally put down his vision for the place eight years ago. It's remarkable how true the finished product is to the original vision.
Standing in the atrium lobby on a sunny day, anyone would seem haloed by the light. It's fitting that it's Nancy, who in 1979, at another time when the old library building faced mortal threats, was among the bold community pioneers (along with Joanna Chapman and others) who came up with the idea of an arts and crafts gallery.
"Can you imagine downtown Dundas without this building?" Nancy asks.
No. I can't. I really can't. It wouldn't be Dundas anymore.
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"Where architectural imagination is absent, the case is hopeless." - Louis Sullivan
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