Let the AGO, Gehry Love-In Begin

While Gehry's building may not be great, it will inherently be better than Daniel Libeskind's Crystal. Libeskind's work is the low point of pretentious, self-indulgent and crass egotism. The only thing Libeskind offered Toronto was the low watermark for comparing other structures.

I went yesterday on a media tour and have to say the top two contemporary floors are reminiscent of the exhibition space on the second floor of the MoMA in New York: there's a surprise around every corner and there isn't a bad view in the place. It is just pure fun, plain and simple. The staircase connecting the fourth floors to those below was still closed (even the elevator is slow, but fun), but the smaller, south-facing staircase between the 5th and 4th floors was open and has a most impressive. The third floor is just a big hall for private functions, and the second floor is worth an afternoon all in itself. They kept the parts everybody loves, like the atrium and the crowded Masters halls and the Moore sculpture centre, and have lept forward 20 years into a very creative approach to curation in the Canadian wing, mixing colonial-era portraits with First Nations costumes and still-wet Kent Monkmans that consume an entire wall. All in all, it's freaking stunning inside, and at the same time it's showcasing the city outside in all directions, which is sadly not the case at the ROM (just thinking about the staircase in the crystal makes me depressed). Even the smaller rooms like the new sculpture room, which could have been treated as afterthoughts, are thought-provoking and surprising. The only thing that sucks is that they haven't put their collection online in any comprehensive way, so when you go home after you can't look up what you just saw.