1.
Vancouver's artists had already achieved national attention in the 1950s when B.C. Binning, Jack Shadbolt and their students dominated the small regional art world through their example and activism. The generation that emerged in the 1960s made the city's "scene with no scene" even more celebrated, and it gained not only national but international exposure. As in the previous decade, Vancouver found willing outside voices to tell it that it led Canada in progressive contemporary art. The enthusiasm of visiting curators and critics on national junkets funded by the Canada Council confirmed that Vancouver and its institutions rated at the top of the national scale. As David Silcox's candid 1983 account reveals, placing Vancouver's artists on an international stage was part of a national plan, enacted by Silcox himself and others using the resources of the Canada Council.4 Examples of this successful boosterism include the endorsements of the Toronto critic Arnold Rockman, notably his juror's statement for the 1966 BC Annual, Painting '66 "I should say without any hesitation that the best BC painting in 1966 is not merely a regional manifestation of excellence but appears to be in the vanguard of the whole country."5 In 1966 the Council announced that its largest grant to a public gallery would go to the Vancouver Art Gallery, a decision that spoke to the city's success in achieving the status of a national vanguard. The image was consolidated in that same year, when the Council sponsored the foundation of the artist-run experimental centre Intermedia.

In 1967, Artforum editor Philip Leider was persuaded to write an evaluation of the city's art in which he compared the success of Vancouver to the aspirations of other cities "away from the geographical centre of their trade." In his judgement, only Los Angeles (where Artforum had recently established its headquarters) had almost succeeded. San Francisco (frequently bashed by the Clement Greenberg coterie of Artforum writers) had been the most pitiable failure, "as was witnessed in the disastrous history of the San Francisco figurative school." Washington, DC, had produced "ambitious" art, but those artists had moved to New York, leaving no legacy in Washington itself - an extreme example of a regional centre barely knowing of its own existence. Leider concluded inconclusively that Vancouver had the potential to sustain ambitious art, as it most resembled Los Angeles: "Whether Vancouver can long sustain the bright and promising artists it now is graced to have, much less nourish second and third generations, is a challenge the community must face."6 However cautiously put, Leider's analysis was seen as a vote of confidence from New York.

The staging of Vancouver art as an international contender in the 1960s . . .