Museum opening pushed back
MOCA’s CEO promises gallery will be perfect when it opens on Sterling Rd. in September
First, the good news: on Wednesday, the provincial government pledged $5 million to the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada, the long-gestating local art institution that’s been creeping toward completion in Toronto’s west end since October 2015.
Now, the not so good: at a public gathering convened at 213 Sterling Rd. — down the street from 158, the museum’s eventual home — MOCA CEO Heidi Reitmaier broke the news that the museum’s grand opening, pegged for May 26, was no more.
Instead, she promised, MOCA will open on Sept. 22.
The museum will, however, offer a sneak preview during Doors Open Toronto May 26 and 27.
Before the announcement, Reitmaier said what most were already thinking. “If you’ve even driven by in the past week, I think you knew,” she said sheepishly. “It’s not ready. It’s clearly not ready. And I can’t do anything if that’s the case.”
Just making the announcement here, and not a half block away in the soaring space of MOCA’s grand main floor, told much of the tale on its own. At the Tower Automotive Building, MOCA’s eventual home, jackhammers throbbed high above the street, carving new space from old brick.
Before leading a tour of the building, still an active construction site, Reitmaier and her team donned steel-toed boots and hard hats, and Brent Kingdon, MOCA’s construction project manager, offered a general warning.
“If you see a wire dangling from the ceiling or out of the wall, please don’t touch it,” he said, ushering a group in orange-and-yellow safety vests inside. Arriving on the second floor, the walls fitted in crisp, fresh drywall, the concrete floors ground and polished to smooth, pebbly aggregate, Reitmaier surveyed the scene: majestic concrete columns that flare at the ceiling, scrubbed clean; towering new windows flooding the space with light.
“It looks pretty done, that’s the thing,” she sighed. Still, May 26 would have been a rush, both construction-wise — functioning elevators and an occupancy permit seem to be the main holdups, the second reliant on the first — and thinking the space through.
“As a museum, we really need time to figure out the nuances,” Reitmaier said.
“We think the building itself really is an invitation for artists to respond to.”
No question it’s that. With its thick columns spaced at six-metre intervals, this is no white cube, the blank, neutral space most contemporary art museums strive to be. On the main floor, a main hub of the various trades with tools and materials piled high, a portal in the building’s west wall opens to a glass curtain wall and the grounds beyond — the museum’s eventual café and public plaza.
It was hard to see, through the dust and debris, though Reitmaier’s vision seemed clear. She spoke excitedly of the building’s ties to the history of labour in the city — the vertical factory/warehouse was built in 1919 — and its service as a cultural hub, much less official than the one she’ll be leading. While abandoned, the building was famously a site of illegal late-night parties and a tableau for a generation of the city’s graffiti artists.
Reitmaier’s plans include integrating that history, not papering over it, which can only be a good thing.
It’s been a long road. The building has been derelict since 2006, when Tower Automotive shut down.
MOCA announced the building would serve as its new home in June 2015 and pegged its opening for May 2017. That shifted: first to fall 2017, then May 26 of this year.
By March of this year, communications director Rachel Hilton says, it was clear that date would fall by the wayside, too.
And so the road got that much longer Wednesday, but Reitmaier promises this shift will be the last.
“When it opens, it needs to be perfect,” she said. “By September, it will be.”