VANCOUVER, BC.- The Vancouver Art Gallery’s 2009 exhibition schedule is one of the most ambitious in the institution’s history. Next year, the Gallery will open its doors to solo shows by internationally renowned contemporary artists from Canada and around the world, including Stan Douglas, Andreas Gursky, Anthony Hernandez, Kerry James Marshall, Scott McFarland and Fiona Tan.

The Gallery is also extremely proud to announce that it will present the North American premiere of Vermeer, Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art: Masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum – a stunning exhibition of masterworks organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam from its world renowned collection. This exhibition will offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see artworks in a Canadian museum from one of the most important periods in western art history. The Gallery will also celebrate historical art in the sweeping exhibitions Legacies of Impressionism in Canada: 3 Exhibitions and Expanding Horizons: American and Canadian Landscape Painting and Photography, 1860-1918.

How Soon is Now: Contemporary Art From Here continues the Gallery’s commitment to presenting the best of British Columbia art by providing a look at some of the most compelling artists working in the province today. A British Columbia focus will be extended with Vancouver artist Reece Terris’s major project Ought Apartment -- a more than 60-foot apartment tower, which will rise up through the Gallery’s rotunda. Art from the province will also take the spotlight in the permanent collection exhibitions Enacting Abstraction, Western Landscapes: Emily Carr, E.J. Hughes, Ann Kipling, Gordon Smith and Two Visions: Emily Carr and Jack Shadbolt.

Vancouver Art Gallery’s 2009 Exhibitions:
Legacies of Impressionism in Canada: 3 Exhibitions
January 31 to April 19, 2009
This co-presentation of three exceptional exhibitions celebrates the groundbreaking Canadian artists of the early twentieth century who embraced European Impressionism and revolutionized Canadian painting. With a focus on Quebec artist Maurice Cullen and his contemporaries, as well as those who followed, these exhibitions trace the work of Canada’s painters as they explored the Canadian landscape and the world beyond with new and exciting perspectives.

Maurice Cullen and His Circle
Organized by the National Gallery of Canada and centred on the work of one of Canada’s finest landscape painters, this exhibition explores the work of the first Canadian artists to render the Canadian landscape in compositions of pure, unblended colour. The exhibition presents nearly 40 canvases by Cullen and fellow Quebec painters James Wilson Morrice and William Brymner, as well as Robert Pilot and A.Y Jackson.

Maurice Cullen: Intimist
Paying particular attention to Cullen’s intimately-scaled works of the Quebec landscape, this exhibition of twelve exceptional canvases from a private collection provides examples of work from the artist’s entire career.

Exploring Light: Canadian Landscape Paintings from the Collection
Presenting late 19th and early 20th century oils from the Vancouver Art Gallery collection, Exploring Light reveals the important influence of European painting on the creation of the modernist Canadian landscapes. The exhibition traces how painters such as Emily Carr, Maurice Cullen, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson and James Wilson Morrice introduced light and fluid brush strokes into their work, revealing the influences of Impressionism.

How Soon is Now: Contemporary Art From Here
February 7 to May 3, 2009
How Soon Is Now looks at some of the most compelling artists working in British Columbia today. The exhibition comprises a survey of new work currently being produced in the province, focusing on developing practices to provide insight into the strategies, methods and interests of the region’s contemporary artists. Including a wide range of media, from painting, sculpture and photography, to video, performance and installation, the exhibition is an important opportunity to recognize the significant contribution of British Columbia’s visual artists to the culture of this region and beyond.

Enacting Abstraction
February 14 to May 10, 2009
Enacting Abstraction considers the ideas and formal strategies of abstract art from the early 20th century to its most contemporary forms. The exhibition draws on the Gallery’s permanent collection to reveal the principle tenets of abstraction, as well as loans from contemporary artists who provide exciting examples of how they translate and extend abstraction to serve their needs today. The exhibition will include permanent collection works by Paul-Emile Borduas, Neil Campbell, Robert Irwin, Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, James Welling, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun and many others.

Western Landscapes: Emily Carr, E.J. Hughes, Ann Kipling, Gordon Smith
March 7 to May, 18, 2009
This permanent collection exhibition presents works that take British Columbia’s landscape as their subject using remarkably different approaches. Beginning with the pioneering images of Emily Carr, whose modernist painting strongly shaped an understanding of the natural world on the west coast, the exhibition also examines the realist approach of E.J. Hughes, the visionary drawings of Ann Kipling and the expressionist landscapes of Gordon Smith.

NEXT Reece Terris: Ought Apartment
April 25 to September 20, 2009
Vancouver artist Reece Terris will create a more than 60-foot high architecture installation for the Gallery’s rotunda. Focusing on the evolution of domestic space in Vancouver over the last six decades, the artist will construct an apartment “tower” with six full-scale apartments stacked on top of each other, rising through the heart of the Gallery to the fourth floor. Commenting on interior design and renovation as social phenomena, each floor of the installation will reflect the floor plan of a particular decade. As the installation ascends, the floor plans change to represent changing social values and décor over time.

Vermeer, Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art: Masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum
May 9 to September 13, 2009
Touring for the first time in North America, this landmark exhibition will present the extraordinary works of art made by Dutch Masters of the seventeenth-century, a period known as the Golden Age of Dutch Art. The largest and most significant collection of Dutch art from this period to be shown in Canada, the exhibition will feature major paintings and drawings by all of the celebrated masters, including Hals, Rembrandt, van Ruisdael, ter Borch and Vermeer. The exhibition incorporates a magnificent selection of decorative arts, including furniture, silver, glassware, porcelain and textiles. Providing an overview of the fascinating political, economic and social forces that shaped the 17th century, the exhibition will allow the visitor to view artworks in the rich context in which they were made. The exhibition is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Andreas Gursky: Werke/Works 80-08
May 30 to September 20, 2009
This groundbreaking exhibition will present an outstanding overview of work by Andreas Gursky, who is widely regarded for his ongoing photographic project attempting to compile an “encyclopedia of life.” The exhibition includes more than 150 photographs drawn from all periods of Gursky’s practice including six large scale new works. In a radical departure with regard to the presentation of his work, the majority of the images will be in an intimate format not employed by the artist since the early 1980s. This will allow visitors to revisit many familiar works at a scale and in a context that encourages a reconsideration of the individual images and Gursky’s oeuvre as a whole. The exhibition is co-organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Kunstmuseen, Krefeld and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

Anthony Hernandez
May 30 to September 7, 2009
The first Canadian exhibition of work by this celebrated Los Angeles-based photographer, Anthony Hernandez will present approximately 40 of the artist’s early black-and-white images along with colour works from the mid-1980s, capturing the spaces, people and streets of LA. Produced using a large-format camera – an unusual format for street photography – Hernandez’s images are highly-detailed and formally beautiful. Without succumbing to dramatization, his works subtlety reveal social patterns of one of North America’s most racially and culturally divided cities.

Stan Douglas Klatsassin
May 30 to September 13, 2009
This exhibition focuses on the video and photo installation titled Klatsassin created by internationally renowned Vancouver artist Stan Douglas The work is named after a Tsîlhoqot’in chief who was accused of leading an insurrection in 1864 that resulted in the death of ten road builders. Shot on location in the Cariboo and Chilcotin districts of British Columbia, and a studio backlot in Vancouver, the video offers a non-linear narrative of the events that initiated the Chilcotin War. The exhibition will include a group of seven grand location photographs as well as a body of black and white portrait photographs of the video’s principal characters.

Two Visions: Emily Carr and Jack Shadbolt
May 30 to September 13, 2009
Two Visions presents paintings and works on paper from the Gallery’s collection on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Jack Shadbolt’s birthday. The exhibition compares and contrasts artwork by Carr and Shadbolt, two British Columbian artists who contributed significantly to the history of Canadian art. The exhibition will present key works by both artists including more than 40 paintings as well as rarely-shown charcoal drawings by Carr.

Fiona Tan: Rise and Fall
October 3, 2009 to January 3, 2010
Fiona Tan: Rise and Fall will present recent works produced by the Amsterdam-based artist. Central to the exhibition will be a film installation commissioned by the Vancouver Art Gallery. For this film, Tan has filmed on location in Niagara Falls, Belgium and the Netherlands, constructing a narrative of isolation, loss and dislocation that uses the sea as an evocative metaphor for memories of a woman’s life. Additional works in the exhibition will be presented using a range of scale and media, from framed photographs to monitor-size installations to filmic-scaled projections.

Scott McFarland
October 3, 2009 to January 3, 2010
This exhibition surveys recent work by Vancouver-based artist Scott McFarland who has developed an important body of photographic work exploring environments where relationships between civilization and nature are investigated. His subject matter is carefully chosen to point out the artificiality of built spaces that intersect closely with nature, such as public parks, private gardens, remote cabins and zoos. The exhibition will include approximately 40 images produced between the late 1990s and 2009 and drawn from several bodies of work produced over the course of his meteoric career.

Kerry James Marshall
October 3, 2009 to January 03, 2010
This is the first solo exhibition in Canada of work by the celebrated Chicago-based artist. Renowned for his painting and sculptural installations, Marshall draws strongly on African-American popular culture and his upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama and South Central, Los Angeles for the subject matter of his practice.

Expanding Horizons: American and Canadian Landscape Painting and Photography, 1860-1918
October 17, 2009 to January 17, 2010
Encompassing major artistic figures on both sides of the Canadian-American border, this substantial survey explores national identity as expressed through the dramatic grandeur of landscape painting and photography from the American Civil War and Canadian Confederation to the close of the First World War. Captured in the exhibition are sweeping vistas rendered by Canadians Emily Carr, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, David Milne, Tom Thomson and William Notman, and Americans Frederic Edwin Church, Georgia O’Keefe, John Singer Sargent, Edward Curtis and Alfred Stieglitz. Expanding Horizons is organized by the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal.