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Toronto is very sprawled and mediocre, despite people who live there never being willing to admit it, it's just a large Midwestern city no different than Cleveland or Indianapolis. However while I can't make any insight into whether the art community is shrinking or growing, the fact that this piece made you feel emotions, and then discuss them, is probably a victory for the artist. Consider how bland and boring most public art is:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/city-of-calgary-public-art-1.6757072
https://globalnews.ca/news/8787114/the-ring-art-place-ville-marie-esplanade/
That's probably what I hate the most in the modern art criticism. Nothing against you personally, but this is so unsatisfactory and lazy. I mean I get all the things about "everything can be art" and pop-art and readymade and stuff. But when a seagull pooping on my shoulder is art (it certainly makes me feel emotions!), I think this makes the whole thing meaningless. Maybe that's the goal, but I know it is not meaningless. I have been to the museums. I know how art can make me feel, and I know it is something. Something that "ha-ha, made you look!" is not. These two aren't just part of the same worlds, and maybe I can't explain with proper jargon why exactly, but I know it.
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It's long distance, and "member of my family" here just means people related by blood.
They certainly succeeded at making a piece of art that evokes emotions, but that's just not my criteria for what constitutes good art since (as someone who dabbles in arts myself, primarily literature and music) I think it's trivially easy to do so - especially if you consider "intense hatred of and anger at the artist" a valid emotion. Part of the problem is that the art in Union Station looks like it was taken straight from an unfinished sketch. Skill is an integral part of it for me - an important part of being an artist is constantly questioning what you bring to the world others couldn't already offer themselves, and if your art lacks technique and is easily replicated, you genuinely don't offer much. In order for any art to be considered good at all, there also needs to be a way for it to be bad, there needs to be a non-trivial set of failure-criteria that a sizeable amount of people would not be able to satisfy. A lot of modern artists, even celebrated ones (e.g. Rothko) don't have that.
Furthermore, there are works that fit an art gallery that don't work in a public space people have to frequent every day. I don't know about you, but I don't think Francisco Goya's Black Paintings should be displayed in a public square, and that was constructed with infinitely more talent than whatever was in Union Station. I would honestly rather have an inoffensive, bland piece of public art than something that makes me feel depressed or annoyed every time I encounter it.
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