After reading several of the articles in The Journal’s ongoing series of cheerleading over the planned Art Gallery of Alberta–most recently Shawn Ohler’s dispatch from Denver (“City has seen the future, and its name is Denver”, Oct. 23), I wonder why The Journal sees its role as not one of reporting the story from all angles, but instead as celebrating and promoting the plans to the public.

Unquestioningly accepted seems to be the rationale for the new design, in which “aurora borealis and Inuit art” are said to speak to Edmonton’s “character.” But wouldn’t the word “caricature” be closer to the truth?

Ohler’s article states that Randall Stout, the architect selected for the project, “Thought about what it will look like covered in snow.”

When I saw the proposals, the realities of Edmonton’s winter came to my mind as well. Only to my thinking, Stout’s “ribbon of steel,” collecting snow and ice and freezing and thawing with daily temperature changes, will almost certainly present overhead hazards to gallery-goers and passers-by alike. When we contemplate this design, we must also imagine the safety barricades and “watch for falling ice” signs that surely will be required.

To these in the art community who are not employed by the gallery, the bigger problem is not Stout’s design specifically (it was not the worst of the four proposals). The problem is with the misguided notion, like something out of Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.”

The new gallery plans have little to do with improving the arts in Edmonton.

Low Gallery attendance figures clearly have more to do with the conjunction of low quality exhibitions and high price admissions, than with the egotistical need for a flashier facility.

Instead of patronizingly informing readers that the plans have “captured our collective imaginations,” perhaps The Journal should dig deeper, beyond the gallery’s own staff and press releases, and report on the diversity of opinion within the wider art community.

It may not be gallery executive director Tony Luppino’s bag, but some art lovers still actually go to galleries just to look at a picture.

Unfortunately, to see great exhibitions we must travel, often far from home, and the new AGA promises to do nothing to change that.

Marc Country, Edmonton