Footsteps at an Exhibiton

I have to say, I was surprised by last week's B.C. NDP government announcement of a $800+ million investment in a new Royal B.C. Museum. The money, yes, but also the timing, with newly (by-)elected Liberal opposition leader Kevin Falcon entering the legislature. If ever a new opposition leader needed something to gnaw on, hold up in the face of a provincial 8-cent per litre gas tax at a time when Lower Mainland gas prices are at $2.40 per litre, this was it.

A more recent provincial government announcement was an overhaul of the province's thirty-year-old oil and gas royalty system, which includes the elimination of subsidy programs and raising the royalty rate from three- to five-percent. And before you wonder what difference two percentage points make, the 1972-1975 NDP government raised the tax on mining companies from one percent to three percent and invested the difference in the kinds of social programs most everyone else in the country was enjoying, except for those of us in B.C.

Is a museum a social program? Given that the image and the sign have bearing on our general health, I would say yes. Museums engaged in decolonization and anti-racism, like the Royal B.C. Museum, provide experiences that are essential to educating us as to the dangers our occasionally unhealthy minds are prone to obsess on, if not act on overtly. Evidence for this can be found on social media platforms, where people from across the spectrum think it's OK to act out because they're in pain, and because it's not "real life" -- when it is.

But do we need an expensive museum to remediate that? That was the question I asked myself yesterday morning while walking through the Polygon Art Gallery's display of 25 photographs by Alexander Glyadeylov shot and printed during the early days of Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine. Just before bed I heard from a friend (Jonathan Wells, Guest Services and Tours) who was present at the exhibition's opening reception:  

During the opening reception tonight everyone went upstairs into the Seaspan [Room] and [curator] Elliott [Ramsey] had Alexander on a Zoom call (at 5:30AM local Kyiv time) projected onto the large screen. It was very powerful listening to him in real time talk about the conditions there. At one point, Elliott was able to turn the computer around so that Alexander could see the room full of people who had come out to support his work. An audience member came up to the lectern and spoke to him in Ukrainian. I found it quite affecting. He is continuing to photograph daily, despite other photographers having been killed by Russian soldiers, one quite recently. 

Yes, we could have signed on for this event online, but there's something to be said about gathering in three-dimensional public space in place of doing so via the same devices many of us use for work. Not only do our public museums provide these spaces, they are there to help us process our experiences, remind us that we are not alone. Saving the planet is not simply a matter of changing the way we power our machines, making them cleaner and more efficient; it's changing the narratives that herald those who, when not "discovering" new fossil fuels sources, are invading sovereign countries in an effort to bolster their own.