Persistence pays off for Remai in pages of New York Times

Saskatoon gallery cracks list of top places to visit

SASKATOON While many were shocked by the inclusion of Saskatoon on the New York Times’ list of top travel destinations, the Remai Modern art gallery’s executive director expected such recognition.

The latest praise for Saskatoon’s new art gallery perhaps ranks as the most significant. Saskatoon earned a spot on the New York Times’ top places to visit in 2018, largely due to the October opening of the gallery.

Saskatoon was the only Canadian destination to crack the list of 52 locations.

“I’m delighted,” gallery executive director and CEO Gregory Burke said in an interview Friday. “Of course, we’ve been executing a strategy to get that sort of attention for years.”

The recognition follows the Remai Modern’s recent mention in other lists in Azure magazine, Wallpaper* magazine and the Travel Channel. Burke said the international praise is not a fluke. It’s the result of hard work.

“We’ve been nagging the New York Times now for years,” Burke said.

A further New York Times article on the gallery could be in the works, he added.

Burke pointed to an article on the gallery that ran on the front page of the Wall Street Journal’s life and arts section in September. Burke said that article was the result of an hour-long conversation between himself and the newspaper’s arts writer, Kelly Crow, in New York a year ago.

“Why does that happen?” Burke asked. “It doesn’t just fall out of the sky.”

Burke called the attention “unprecedented” for an art museum, especially one in a relatively remote location on the Canadian Prairies.

Todd Brandt, president and CEO of Tourism Saskatoon, said he’s never seen this level of attention for Saskatoon in his 20 years working in tourism. Brandt pointed out the New York Times has tens of millions of monthly readers online, plus its print edition audience.

“You can’t buy that kind of exposure,” Brandt said.

For Burke, the glowing reviews are vindication for a venture that has been divisive. The construction of the gallery has been marked by delays and rising costs and has resulted in several lawsuits.

“I don’t want to sound arrogant or anything, but I always believed in the project,” he said.

Burke said he is already hearing about visitors to the gallery from B.C., Alberta and Manitoba. The gallery has also reached 5,000 memberships, which Burke calls an “extraordinary number.”

Burke noted the irony of Saskatoon making a tourism-destination list during a week of successive extreme cold warnings.

“Thankfully, they didn’t mention that,” he said.