Western Standard - June 23, 2022


RINGING A BELL New $5M art project up in Montreal has Calgarians seeing double


Episode Stats


Length

2 minutes

Words per minute

152.66595

Word count

335

Sentence count

20


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A new 90-foot art piece at Place Ville-Marie in Montreal looks strikingly similar to a piece of public art in Calgary that raised the ire of Calgarians years ago. The stainless steel structure weighs 23,000 kilograms and costs around $5 million.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 It's a full-circle moment for art criticism in Canada.
00:00:03.840 Montreal is ringing in summer with a new 90-foot art piece
00:00:07.140 at the entrance to Montreal's downtown Place Ville-Marie.
00:00:11.220 And it's strikingly similar to a piece of public art
00:00:14.200 that raised the ire of Calgarians years ago.
00:00:18.080 The stainless steel structure weighs 23,000 kilograms
00:00:22.060 and costs around $5 million.
00:00:24.640 Funding came from both taxpayer and private money.
00:00:27.340 The art piece was commissioned by real estate company Ivanhoe Cambridge
00:00:31.180 and designed by architecture firm Claudier Cormier.
00:00:35.120 The lead architect says the design shows the marriage or union
00:00:38.460 of the past, present, and future of the city.
00:00:41.480 The piece was put up on Saturday but is not completed yet.
00:00:45.020 When finished, the ring will give off a soft light
00:00:47.460 and be illuminated at special events.
00:00:50.340 Vice President of Quebec's Ivanhoe Cambridge office
00:00:53.480 said that the goal was to attract all kinds of people
00:00:56.240 and create an alive and dynamic downtown area.
00:00:59.560 Montrealers are comparing the art to a bagel, a camera lens,
00:01:03.280 a portal, and even R-rated toys on Twitter.
00:01:07.960 This is part of a $200 million investment,
00:01:11.380 restoration of Place Ville-Marie.
00:01:13.620 Art is never meant to be universal,
00:01:15.440 but to generate discussion, good and bad.
00:01:18.160 Van Gogh never sold a painting in his lifetime,
00:01:20.700 said Claude Lamar on Twitter.
00:01:22.740 The art piece may ring a bell with many Albertans,
00:01:26.420 as in 2013, a similar controversial installation
00:01:29.520 went up in Calgary.
00:01:32.220 Calgary's former mayor, Nahid Nenshi,
00:01:34.600 called the $470,000 blue ring awful
00:01:38.920 and clarified that it was commissioned
00:01:40.780 before he was elected.
00:01:42.880 The Calgary project, titled Traveling Light,
00:01:45.700 was done by a Swedish art group called Inges Indeed.
00:01:50.800 Nenshi said 80% of the work and budget
00:01:53.260 for the blue ring was spent in Calgary
00:01:55.200 with Calgarian businesses.
00:01:57.700 The blue ring of Calgary has a Twitter page
00:02:00.060 where the piece has made shout-outs
00:02:01.820 to its Montreal cousin.
00:02:04.240 As Trolls Online mocked the new installation,
00:02:07.520 the giant blue ring tweeted
00:02:08.760 that Montrealers will soon come to love the piece.