New Public Art Gallery for the City of Burnaby, Support the BAC Online Petition

The present Burnaby Art Gallery was opened in 1967 in Ceperley House at Deer Lake and it has amassed a collection of over 5,000 significant art works on paper from noted artists including Robert Young, Sybil Andrews, Gordon Smith, and Jack Shadbolt.

This is the third largest collection of art in B.C. Ceperley House is a heritage home and was not designed as a gallery and it has significant limitations. There is no environmentally controlled storage for the city art collection in the building, exhibition spaces are small thereby restricting the type of exhibitions that can be shown, and the building lacks adequate spaces for social gatherings and education programming.

Since the gallery opened in 1967, the population of Burnaby has doubled. Burnaby is now the third largest city in B.C. Similarly the architecture and transportation face of the city has also changed dramatically.

The Burnaby Arts Council believes that it is time for Burnaby to build a new city gallery that can properly host and show its collection and best reflect the reality of our creativity, urban growth and cultural change. Bill Thomson, Burnaby Arts Council Chair, had this comment: “Burnaby is the 20th largest city in Canada.

Every other city in Canada of similar size has a contemporary, purpose-built gallery that provides significant cultural and economic benefits to its community. Why not Burnaby?”