Is your feature request related to a problem or challenge? Please describe what you are trying to do.
Describe the solution you'd like
Currently VariantArray requires BinaryViewArray but by default the Parquet reader produces BinaryArray -- this means that without a workaround, it is not possible to read data from the ParquetReader without converting
According to the Arrow canonical extension type (see apache/arrow#47456) BinaryArray is valid (as is BinaryViewArray)
I added a workaround in
But this ticket tracks the work to actually support BinaryArray properly in VariantArray
Describe alternatives you've considered
Additional context