Talk:David Mirvish Gallery

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:David Mirvish Gallery/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Ammodramus (talk · contribs) 19:06, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I'd be glad to take on the task of reviewing what looks like an interesting article. I'll probably take a day or two to read through it and do minor copy-editing, then will get serious about the GA criteria. I'm very new at the GAR process, so I'm going to proceed rather deliberately; don't expect a complete review before a week passes, although I'll certainly try to get it done before that. (I notice that the creator/nominator has been around WP for considerably longer than I have, so I trust that he'll let me know if I go beyond the bounds of what it's right for a GA reviewer to ask.)

I notice that most of the citations in this article are to sources that don't appear to be available online. Are these sources readily available, if questions should arise concerning them? Ammodramus (talk) 19:06, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for taking this on! Yes, they're all available as PDFs that I can email you. They're available via subscription-based ProQuest. -- Zanimum (talk) 13:42, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! No need to e-mail them; I just wondeed if they'd be available if we needed them to clear up ambiguities or if something needed more detail.

I'm working on the review, and will try to have it up soon. Sorry for the delay; not only am I trying to proceed very methodically, but I keep getting blindsided by real-world work that gets in the way of my WP duties. Ammodramus (talk) 17:03, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

No worries, we're in the same boat. -- Zanimum (talk) 16:33, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Ready at last! I apologize for keeping you waiting so long while I produced this; in light of that and of its length, please don't feel pressed to respond to it quickly. In particular, I'm not going to be strict about the one-week limit, as long as we're making progress.

If you disagree with something in this assessment, don't hesitate to tell me so. First, as I said above, I'm new at the GAR process. While we're working on improving the article, I can also be improving as a reviewer. Second, I see GAR as a collaboration between the nominator and the reviewer, with the object of producing a better article. I'm not here to issue edicts that you have to obey on pain of a GA fail. We may find ourselves disagreeing on some points, and discussion is the way to resolve those disagreements.

My review's summarized in the table; below that, in a subsection "Review details", is a list of numbered points, referred to in the table. I've started a "Comments" section below that, as a place for our discussion. As we address them, I'll mark off numbered points and change the ratings icons in the table.

OK, let's collaborate! Ammodramus (talk) 15:11, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Wow, very thorough! I'll prepare some responses tonight, presumably post them tomorrow.

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	I'm not sure if the pull-up quote conforms to WP:NFCCP; see point (1) below.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	--The lead section seems too short for an article of this length; it should be rewritten after some of the other points in this review have been cleared up. --Y The layout isn't well organized. The entire body of the article is in one "History" section; the last third or so of the article consists of several short subsections that give the impression of having been written separately and added without regard to the overall organization of the article. Better now, but see (16) below. --Y There are WP:REALTIME issues in the lead (I've marked it with a "When?" tag), and in the Mirvish+Gehry section.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	Looks good.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	Article appears to be well sourced, with citations for almost every statement. There's one unsourced statement in the lead that I'm not sure about: "Artists at the gallery are best known for Color Field and Post-painterly Abstraction works." That "best known" feels like a statement of opinion; in any case, it'd be better with a citation, just to make it clear that it's not OR.
	2c. it contains no original research.	See preceding.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	There are a couple of large gaps in the coverage; see points 2–4 below. There are also lots of small holes in the coverage, none of which would kill a GA rating individually (and some of which may have to go unfilled for lack of sources), but which collectively make the article seem incomplete: see points 5–15 below.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	The one-sentence paragraph about the Royal Alexandria Theatre seems like a digression; Google Maps indicates that it's nowhere near Honest Ed's. "Anne Mirvish had another building..." also feels like a digression, especially if the David Mirvish Gallery was long-closed by then.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	No very controversial issues covered. Article seems to cover Mirvish neutrally, without puffery.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	Article history shows no edit wars or the like.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	One image from Commons, tagged PD
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	Not a great photo, since the Victorian houses aren't really recognizable as such; but I don't find anything better in Commons, so this will do. The caption needs to be clearer: just where is Mirvish Village in the photo? Right side (across street from Ed's)? Beyond Ed's on same side of street? Both?
	7. Overall assessment.	This article definitely has GA potential. There are some issues that need to be addressed before it gets to that level, and some of them might require some further research. Happily, it sounds as though the materials are available. I'll put this on hold; and I won't be strict about the one-week limit if more time's necessary to gather information.

Review details

1. I'm not sure if the long pull-up quote is consistent with WP:NFCCP. It consists of eight sentences, which is stretching the limits of "brief". I think it'd be better to use it for a source in different places in the article. I could see quoting the single sentence about "paid to sit around reading" in discussing DM's decision to run a gallery; and we could use it as a source for statement(s) that DM tended to show the same artists, that he focused on abstract work, and that he didn't try to cover everything going on in the art world.
   If we use all or part of this quote, it should be checked for fidelity to source: "a successful paintings" looks like a typo.
2. We need more about the styles represented at the gallery. Right now, we've got a sentence in the lead naming two Wikilinked styles; we've got the pull-up quote non-specifically mentioning "an abstract manner", and we've got a bit near the time of the gallery's closing about the passage out of vogue of the styles that interested Mirvish. This needs more coverage in the body of the article: name the major styles that the gallery handled, briefly describe their arcs of fashionability, and perhaps mention some of the major practitioners who sold through the gallery. This strikes me as a significant hole in the article, and one that really needs to be addressed.
3. YThe article doesn't make clear the relationship between the commercial gallery and what I assume is Mirvish's personal collection. I assume that everything from the heading "Mirvish Collection" downward has to do with the latter. There are some decidedly ambiguous passages, e.g. "As of 1993, Mirvish's gallery was..." If the relationship is what I think it is, I'd be inclined to treat them in two entirely separate sections, and make it very clear that the proposed Mirvish+Gehry gallery isn't the lineal descendant of the Mirvish commercial gallery.

   How's it look now? -- Zanimum (talk) 19:20, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

   Much better. Ammodramus (talk) 16:53, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

4. I think we've at once got too much and too little information about the artists whose work was shown. We've got bluelinked names, redlinked names, and plain-text names, but nothing about the significance of any of them. Rather than a comprehensive list of everyone who ever exhibited, which to me runs afoul of WP:NOTEVERYTHING, I'd suggest that we list (a) major artists whose careers were launched at the gallery, (b) artists so big that their displaying at the gallery was a major coup for it, and (c) artists well-known for working in one of the gallery's specialty styles ("Mirvish was an early exponent of Postneoantifauvism, displaying works by artists such as Bob Smith and Mary Jones...").
5. Y Elaborate a bit on Ed Mirvish being a "prominent discount retailer"; that bland description could apply to someone who ran a couple of K-Marts and led community Christmas toy drives, whereas I get the impression that Honest Ed's is something of a Toronto landmark. I'd be inclined to say something like "was the proprietor of Honest Ed's, a (quick description)". Right now, the only references to Honest Ed's in the article are a photo caption, which doesn't explain its significance, and a statement at the very end of the article stating that the family was selling it.

   Fixed. -- Zanimum (talk) 02:38, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

6. Early in the "Operation" section, Ed Mirvish "bought Victorian homes". A couple of points. First, about how many? Don't necessarily need a number, but a rough one; or some indicator like "a city block of". Second, although it's not specifically listed at WP:EUPHEMISM, the use of "home" to mean "house" seems to tend that way.

   Addressed. -- Zanimum (talk) 18:47, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

   Not quite there yet, I'm afraid. In the paragraph's second sentence, EM "purchased a house"; there are no mentions of further house purchases in the paragraph, but in the last sentence, he "could put a lot behind the Victorian houses, but couldn't tear them down". Two paragraphs further along, he buys 12 more houses, for a total of 23. Does this mean that he started out with 11?

   Also, the "using original tactics" in the second sentence of that paragraph is just the wrong amount of information: we should either skip the original-tactics bit or explain it for curious readers. I'd be inclined toward the former, as digressive from the subject of the DM Gallery, but that's one editor's opinion. How about a rephrasing like "...on Markham Street in 1952, as part of an attempt to expand the store backward despite the area's residential zoning" or "in an attempt to circumvent the area's residential zoning and expand the store backward"?

   My read of "expand backward" is "expand the store backward"; I get the impression that the original plan was to expand into the house(s), and that the decision to demolish the house(s) for parking didn't come about until the City Council put pressure on Mirvish to put in more parking. True? Ammodramus (talk) 13:07, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

7. Y Was Anne's surname "Mirvish"? This article uses that name for her at one point; but the David Mirvish article calls her "Anne Lazare Macklin". We should probably use her full name on first mention. Was she David's mother? Since David seems to be the principal actor in the article, it might be better to describe her in relation to him: "David's mother" rather than "Ed's wife".

   Changed. She was born Anne Macklin, married as Anne Mirvish, and practiced art as Anne Lazare Mirvish (using her mother's maiden name as her faux middle name). -- Zanimum (talk) 02:38, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

8. Y Were the senior Mirvishes signifiantly involved in art, as creators or as major patrons, during David's youth? If he grew up around the contemporary-art scene, the article should make note of it.

   Not at all, that I've ever been able to find. They were shopkeepers, there's really no background in anything else. It was all something they sort of fell into by accident. -- Zanimum (talk) 02:38, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

   I didn't phrase my original point very well: by "David's youth", I didn't mean "from his infancy"; I was just looking for some background for his desire to open a gallery. If Anne had taken up sculpture during his high-school years, or if the senior Mirvishes had taken up fine-art collecting around that time, it'd make his gallery aspirations seem like less of a bolt from the blue. It seems like something of that sort must've happened, since around the time of his graduation, Anne's sculptures had come to the attention of a notable artist like Burlin (who, according to his WP article, was still acquiring prizes and getting significant critical attention in the early 1960s). Ammodramus (talk) 17:28, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

   Okay, I've actually just checked out a book of business advice Ed wrote in 1997. It does go into a bit of detail about Anne's family, including their appreciation of music, so that's now included in the article. But as far as I can tell, they weren't gallery goers until the late 1960s, after the Village was started, let alone collectors. I'm guessing, mainly because no source addresses her career arch, Burlin just met Anne at a dinner party or something, and was just suggesting sight unseen. There's also little about David's youth, other than being roped into his father's stunts. Ed himself didn't have any active interest in the theatre, until he bought one. He did menial jobs at a "legitimate theatre" as a youth, briefly, but that purchase is described in the book flaps as being "mainly because it was such a great deal." -- Zanimum (talk) 18:47, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

   Nice bit of research. I'm sorry to have made you chase my red herring, but think that the article will be better for a mention of Anne's background. Your dinner-party hypothesis makes intuitive sense: she got to talking to Burlin at some kind of Large Donors Hobnob With Famous Artists event, told him that she did sculpture, and he told her that she should check out the New School.

   I'll check this one off, though there are some issues that want to be addressed; I'll bring them up under the next point, since they overlap with it. Ammodramus (talk) 14:03, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

9. The sequence of events around the time of the DM Gallery's opening isn't entirely clear. Did David decide that he was going to run a gallery before the city blocked the demolition of the Victorian houses and the senior Mirvishes decided to launch an arts district, or did Ed and Anne's decision come first, and David then announced that he wanted to run a gallery therein? (This all appears to be happening at about the same time, so it may not be possible to get an exact chronology.) Unless chronological ordering demands otherwise, I'd be inclined to outline things as: Ed buys Victorians for parking lot; city blocks demolition; Ed and Anne decide to launch arts district; David opens one of the first galleries therein. That puts the business with the Victorians all together. Alternatively, we could skip the purchase of the Victorians until after David's decision to run a gallery, then use past participle: "Victorian houses, which Ed had bought intending to construct a parking lot..."

   How's it read now that's I've added content based on Ed's book? The book barely mentions David Mirvish Gallery, it focuses more on Anne's goal of getting a studio, than the Toronto Life profile. The narratives seem definitively skewed by the teller. -- Zanimum (talk) 19:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

   Getting much better. However, we need some dates around that time: right now, our only temporal signposts are the City Council's 1960 parking report, and then David's opening the gallery in 1963.

   Might it be better to keep the Anne material in its own paragraph and not interdigitate it with David's decision to run a gallery? That would give us an Ed paragraph (bought house(s) to expand store but couldn't), an Anne paragraph (art in youth, set aside to work with Ed; went to New School; wanted to open Gerrard Street Village studio, but couldn't), and then a David paragraph (decided he wanted to run a gallery; when Anne got back from NYC, she OK'd it). These would all lead up to a paragraph about the conversion of the Markham Street neighborhood into what became Mirvish Village.

   I'd suggest restructuring the Anne paragraph to put things in chronological order: her background, her putting her art on hold to help Ed run the business, then her going off to Greenwich Village. Regarding her background, the phrase "active in their appreciation of music" has a WP:PEACOCK feel to me: could we be a bit more specific about how this appreciation manifested itself, e.g. played instruments, often attended concerts, frequently listened to music in the home...

10. Y I assume that the gallery occupied one of the Victorian houses, but this should be made explicit.

    Fixed. -- Zanimum (talk) 19:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

    I tweaked the first sentence below the long pull-up quote in "Operation" to make "one of the houses" explicit; and used "his gallery" as more specific than "one of the first units". Does this phrasing seem all right to you, or have I introduced errors or ambiguities? Ammodramus (talk) 16:40, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

    Yes, all that seems accurate, thanks. -- Zanimum (talk) 22:34, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

11. The purpose of the paragraph beginning "During part of the 1960s..." isn't clear. If it's to discuss people who worked for the Mirvish Gallery and later did important art-world things on their own, then there should be an introductory sentence saying so; and we should give a little more detail about what the people did—there's nothing in the article to explain why Jane Corkin would be of interest, and the description "abstract artist Daniel Solomon" could fit anything from an untalented but enthusiastic Sunday painter to Picasso reborn.

    I think this is all taken care of. -- Zanimum (talk) 02:38, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

    Was Klonaridis the gallery's director from its launch until the time it closed? The statement "From the beginning..." doesn't make that explicit. If that was the case, I'd be inclined to say something like "AK was the gallery's director at its opening, and remained in that position until it closed in 19XX".

    How about opening the paragraph about Corkin and Solomon with a topic sentence like "Several people who worked at the Mirvish Gallery went on to establish reputations of their own in the contemporary arts scene"? (That's not well phrased, due to my ignorance of the subject, and you can probably come up with something better.) That lets the reader know what the paragraph is going to be about; without something like that, the jump from Corkin to Solomon seems a little random. Also, could we add "at the Mirvish Gallery" to the Solomon sentence, to make it clear where he worked as an attendant? Right now, a reader could easily get the impression that he worked at Corkin's gallery. Ammodramus (talk) 13:27, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

12. Y It's not made clear on whose behalf Corkin was buying $3000 photographs. Did the gallery buy art and then sell it at a markup? Was she buying them as Mirvish's agent for Mirvish's personal collection? If she was buying them for herself, why was she worried about DM's reaction?

    I've added in a few words, how's it now? It was for the gallery, according to the source. -- Zanimum (talk) 19:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

    Looks good. Ammodramus (talk) 16:59, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

13. Y The sequence of events surrounding the gallery's closing and the York University arrangement isn't clear. Did the gallery close for a while and remove its stock, after which YU ran a gallery out of the same building? Did YU take over the running of Mirvish's business for four months before its final closing? We should have the date at which Mirvish withdrew from the business.

    There's barely anything about the York University project, so I don't even know if the artists were students or other professionals. The Mirvish roster followed AK to his new gallery, but that doesn't rule out other practicing artists. -- Zanimum (talk) 19:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

    Good clarification. Ammodramus (talk) 14:08, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

14. Y If we have a source, we should probably give a date range for Mirvish's sitting on the Nat'l Gallery's board.

    I've just placed an email to the National Gallery of Canada re: board duration, as it'll probably be easier to find reliable sources to back up their email, than hunt for the dates otherwise. Multiple sources I'm finding online, in his official bio, seem to be intoning he was on their board in the 2000s, not the 1990s. -- Zanimum (talk) 22:18, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

    Okay, so I have exact dates of his election in 1993, and [resignation] in 1997, courtesy of the National Gallery's library. But I'm having a time trying to find sources. I'll work more on this. Could I cop out at the end and cite the 1993 and 1997 annual reports? -- Zanimum (talk) 02:38, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

    I don't see why not-- it's not an especially controversial point, so it's not critical that we provide rigorous citations for it. Ammodramus (talk) 13:48, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

15. Y If Google Maps tells me true, the Mirvish+Gehry site is at a considerable distance from Mirvish Village. For non-Torontonians, this should be made clear in the article.

    I've added "Located far south of Mirvish Village," -- Zanimum (talk) 19:21, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

    Looks good. Ammodramus (talk) 14:13, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

16. The modified layout looks a lot better. I wonder, however, whether it might be better to go out of chronological order and put the section "Planned sale of Mirvish Village" before the "Mirvish collection" section. That way, we'd keep all the material related to Mirvish Village together. This is a suggestion only, and I'm not sure that it's necessarily the right approach: if it were my article, I'd try both positions and see how each one read, then decide which to use. Ammodramus (talk) 01:06, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Comments

Sorry for the delay, I'll try and look at this tonight, post tomorrow. My internal clock's been screwed up by the Toronto-area ice storm, I live in a Brampton neighbourhood with aboveground wires and significant tree coverage. -- Zanimum (talk) 22:32, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Ouch. That could account for your rather sparse contribution history of late. No need to apologize, and I hope you've now got heat and electricity once again. Ammodramus (talk) 00:55, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Still nothing after another month. Should this be closed? Wizardman 04:14, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

A couple of the major issues still haven't been touched, so closing this as failed. Wizardman 18:40, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

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