Found: Greg Burke

An OTN reader sent in Greg Burke’s name for the 'Lost’ column. Seemed a bit harsh (thanks anyway L) but for those who don’t know Burke is now executive director and CEO of a rehoused art museum in Saskatoon, Canada. The project is huge. Over $75 million dollars of hard-earned Saskatoon cash is building a four-storey museum of 11,582 square metres. For comparison, the Auckland Art Gallery has 7,200 square meters of public space and is also four floors, so probably a similar sized building.

The name of Burke’s new institution is the Remai Art Gallery of Saskatoon. The Remai bit is the name of the major donor Ellen Remai.  No doubt having come from the land of DAG (Dowse Art Gallery), NAG (National Art Gallery and G-BAG ( Govett-Brewster) Burke was wary of the RAGS acronym and has branded the new museum Remai Modern. 

A couple of years back Remai donated over 400 Picasso linocut prints instantly doubling the value of the collection and weighting its direction. So the 'new' museum will probably be more ‘Modern’ than ‘Contemporary’ or as Burke put it recently, “[Having the word 'Modern' in the gallery's title] doesn’t mean we’re going to be focusing on the most bleeding edge form of contemporary art. Not so.”

Burke is hoping to have a physical museum building to direct in June 2016.

Images: Top left the new building and right Greg Burke standing next to what has been built so far. Bottom a modern vision for the future