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Saturday, April 16, 2005

Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft seem like nice people

Howdy!

Sarah Milroy writes a nice 1,390 word feature about two of her friends. Heck, from the first paragraph you know it's going to be nice - because she states very clearly, right at the beginning of the article "I have known Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft as friends for nearly a decade, but I have only recently begun to think of them as art collectors." Now, I'm one for full-disclosure and transparency in reporting, but somehow, I have this nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that if, say, Mathew Ingram was friends with Darren Entwistle, that his editors would let him write an article that began "I have known Darren Entwistle as a friend for nearly a decade, but I have only recently begun to think of him as the CEO of the largest company in Vancouver." I wish that the Globe and Mail (or for that matter any darn publication) would start taking the ethics of their arts reporters half as seriously as they take that of their cartoonists.

But, enough of my grouching about editorial policies, back to the article at hand - despite that overall "oh isn't this wonderful" nature of the article, Ms. Milroy writes a couple of seriously weird lines. After stating that she "only recently begun to think of them as art collectors." She recants and flips 180ยบ in the next paragraph when she writes "Over these first years of our friendship, my periodic requests to find out more about their collecting met with a polite "perhaps some day soon" vagueness." Now, does this mean that she was thinking of Ms. Beck and Mr. Gruft as collectors in the first years of their friendship, but because she wasn't able to get any hard and fast answers, that she stopped thinking of them as collectors, or that the first line is wrong? Then towards the bottom, she's able to get some porn into the Globe and Mail when she quotes Ms. Beck, and describes what one would assume was a valentines (or anniversary) gift from Mr. Gruft to Ms. Beck. Why? I she feels the need to do so, I can only imagine.

This is one of the rare times when I would have to say that I would have actually liked to have read Alexandra Gill's review of the exhibition.

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