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Ask Torontoist: Whither the AGO Neon?

By Marc Lostracco

Ask Torontoist features questions posed by you, and answered by our elite team of specially trained investigative experts (also known as our staff). Send your questions to ask@torontoist.com.
2009asktorontoist_1.jpg

Reader Eric Foley asks:

I was wondering if you knew what happened to the light sculpture that flashed electric shapes at the west corner of the AGO. It disappeared during the renovation. Do you know if it was destroyed or if it might be installed elsewhere? I used to love to watch it move at night.


Photo by blairware.

Torontoist answers:

The kinetic neon sculpture that used to grace the corner of Dundas and Beverley was almost as iconic to the gallery’s old exterior as the Henry Moore sculpture is to the east. The artwork was computer-controlled to generate a unique pattern every day for a two-year period. The piece is called All Things Being Equal (1978), and it was created by light artist Michael Hayden, who was also responsible for the neon rainbow that used to animate the vaulted glass ceiling at Yorkdale subway station whenever a train arrived or departed. Another Hayden piece, York Electric Murals, was incorporated into an escalator bank at York University’s Scott Library, but it too no longer operates (Hayden told us that, to his knowledge, this “electric sculpture” is not defunct, but merely switched off).
Unlike York and the TTC, who apparently didn’t plan for the maintenance of their commissions, the AGO says that All Things Being Equal is currently in storage at the gallery as a “valued part of [their] permanent collection,” and that reinstallation will be discussed once the design is finalized for the entrance to the new Learning Centre. According to the AGO, any plans to restore the work would closely involve the artist.

Comments

  • http://www.twitter.com/vicdezen Vic De Zen

    Good to know! I actually forgot about the fixture until I saw this article. It’s pretty nostalgic, makes me think of the 90s. I am a bit curious about how/why the TTC and York did not plan maintenance for their commissions.

  • http://www.bitpicture.com Marc Lostracco

    Michael Hayden and I have been in dialogue and I am preparing a separate post on the tragedy of Arc En Ciel (the Yorkdale TTC piece) and what it would take to re-light York Electric Murals. It’s pretty interesting, so stay tuned!

  • CanadianSkeezix

    I look forward to that post. It’s really awful what TTC staff did to Arc en Ciel, and the more public shaming the better.

  • http://undefined spacejack

    Didn’t anyone else find this thing kind of underwhelming compared to what had already been done in Las Vegas or Honest Ed’s decades earlier?
    As for the Yorkdale installation, I seem to recall that the colours had faded, making the light animations not very easy to see… not sure about that though.

  • http://undefined David Toronto

    The installation was first put in place in the 1970s with the opening of the then-new Art Gallery of Ontario.
    I remember being able to fiddle with the settings for the
    neon.
    The first exhibit was about chairs and I thought the neon installation was part of that exhibit

  • eller

    Hayden’s piece titled “Sky’s the Limit” at O’Hare airport (ORD) is really something wonderful to see.
    http://www.gfisk.com/gallery/architecture/DSC_9555.jpg.html

  • http://undefined montauk

    Oh my god, I had no idea what that thing embedded in the sides of the Scott Library escalator was! I wish they’d fix it up and turn it on, but York only seems committed to beautifying the library when important people or big-name conferences are swinging through it (hence the hasty addition, last year, of some potted plants and lamps). Needless to say, it’s far from the first piece on campus to be shut down or neglected. One piece in the Ross Building has been stuffed with discarded advertisements for several years now. They don’t give a shit because they honestly have no soul; it’s been eaten away by cancerous bureaucracy and petty little dictatorships. By your senior year, you notice everyone looks a little like Frodo at the end of LOTR; hollow-eyed and sick. U of T or York’s Glendon campus are all gleaming and golden like the Shire, but you can’t apply, you’ve seen too much.

  • http://undefined Gloria

    I don’t really think that for me (and some others) that the appel lies in being overwhelmed. It’s just very charming and simple. It’s watchable. I really could spend minutes, maybe a whole afternoon just sitting around watching it and reading a book. Not something I can say for the garish lights at Vegas or those facing Honest Ed’s, whose appeal is totally different.

  • http://undefined Gloria

    Really looking forward to that.

  • http://undefined spacejack

    I like turtles.

  • http://undefined montauk

    That’s pretty.

  • http://undefined tomms

    Great article
    I wonder what happens to the lg sign from yonge and bloor .

  • http://undefined Salanth

    So that’s where it went. I hope it comes back soon!

  • http://undefined safetydept

    Marc, you should consider writing something on the travesty of what Ted Rogers did to Michael Snow’s beautiful sculpture “Red, Yellow, Green”, which was formerly found at the intersection where Jarvis St. becomes Mount Pleasant (near Bloor). When his company offices opened at that corner, Rogers had Snow’s large metal sculpture (which is shaped like a tree) displaced from its place on the central meridian of the intersection to a nearby backyard, where it now lies obscured by a brick fence. This was done, seemingly, without any reason at all.
    The worst part is that not only was “Red, Yellow, Green” a publicly commissioned work (and therefore could not have become the property of Mr. Rogers when he ‘bought’ this intersection), but the piece was conceived as a site specific work – meant to be viewed from its original position by people in moving vehicles as they passed through this intersection (and thus be ‘read’ like the pages of a book). What shame!

  • http://undefined stuckatyork

    The reason the Scott Library piece has been turned off is simply because people found it annoying. In hindsight, installing a piece of art that made loud noises and brightly flashed in a library probably wasn’t the wisest idea.

  • http://undefined montauk

    What noise did it make?

  • http://undefined AR

    The TTC and Michael Hayden should work to restore the piece, with LED’s if possible (or create a similar piece). There should be money for it, perhaps using some development section 37 money.
    I didn’t even know about “Red, Yellow, Greem”. It’s a shame to hear of another of his works mistreated.

  • http://undefined nanaimo

    That is hilarious and exactly the kind of oversight common at York. Imagine the poor librarians being treated to it all day long…the only picture I could find is from the artist’s website: http://www.thinkinglightly.com/portfolio.cgi?item=HA02. Unfortunately it doesn’t give quite the sense of just how many flashing bulbs there would be.