Art Gallery of Ontario

About

The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; French: Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located on Dundas Street West in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, the museum complex takes up 45,000 square metres (480,000 sq ft) of physical space, making it one of the largest art museums in North America and the second-largest art museum in Toronto, after the Royal Ontario Museum. In addition to exhibition spaces, the museum also houses an artist-in-residence office and studio, dining facilities, event spaces, gift shop, library and archives, theatre and lecture hall, research centre, and a workshop. Established in 1900 as the Art Museum of Toronto and formally incorporated in 1903, the museum was renamed the Art Gallery of Toronto in 1919, before adopting its present name, the Art Gallery of Ontario, in 1966. The museum acquired the Grange in 1911 and later undertook several expansions to the north and west of the structure. The first series of expansions occurred in 1918, 1924, and 1935, designed by Darling and Pearson. Since 1974, the gallery has undergone four major expansions and renovations. These expansions occurred in 1974 and 1977 by...

The museum was founded in 1900 as the Art Museum of Toronto by a group of private citizens and members of the Toronto Society of Arts. The institution's founders included George A. Cox, Lady Eaton, Sir Joseph W. Flavelle, J. W. L. Forster, E. F. B. Johnston, Sir William Mackenzie, Hart A. Massey, Professor James Mavor, F. Nicholls, Sir Edmund Osler, Sir Henry M. Pellatt, George Agnew Reid, Byron Edmund Walker, Mrs. H. D. Warren, E.R. Wood, and Frank P. Wood.

The museum's incorporation was confirmed by the Government of Ontario three years later by legislation, in An Act respecting the Art Museum of Toronto in 1903. The legislation provided the museum with expropriation powers in order to acquire land for the museum. Before the museum moved into a permanent location, it held exhibitions in rented spaces belonging to the Toronto Public Library near the intersection of Brunswick Avenue and College Street.

The museum acquired the property it presently occupies shortly after the death of Harriet Boulton Smith in 1909, when she bequeathed her historic 1817 Georgian manor, The Grange, to the gallery upon her death. However, exhibitions continued to be held in the rented spaces at the Toronto Public Library branch until June 1913, when The Grange was formally opened as the art museum. In 1911, ownership of The Grange, and the surrounding property was formally transferred to the museum. Shortly afterwards, the museum signed an agreement with the municipal government of Toronto to maintain the grounds south of The Grange as a municipal park.

In 1916, the museum drafted plans to construct a small portion of a new gallery building designed by Darling and Pearson in the Beaux-Arts style. Excavation of the new facility began in 1916. The first galleries adjacent to The Grange were opened in 1918. In the next year, the museum was renamed the Art Gallery of Toronto, in an effort to avoid confusion with the Royal Ontario Museum, itself also an art museum. In 1920, the museum also allowed the Ontario College of Art to construct a building on the grounds. The museum was expanded again in 1924, with the opening of the museum's sculpture court, its two adjacent galleries, and its main entrance on Dundas Street. The museum was expanded again in 1935 with the construction of two additional galleries. Portions of the 1935 expansions were financed by department store chain Eaton's.

In 1965, the museum saw its collection of European and Canadian artworks expand, with the acquisition of 340 works from the Canadian National Exhibition 's operators. During the mid-1960s, the director of the museum, William J. Withrow, pushed to have the museum designated as a provincial museum, in an effort to gain further provincial funding for the institution. In 1966, the museum changed its name to the Art Gallery of Ontario, in order to reflect its new mandate to serve as the provincial art museum.

In the 1970s, the museum embarked on another expansion of its gallery space, with its first phase completed with the opening of the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre on October 26, 1974. Although the museum planned on expanding its Canadian exhibits in its second phase of expansions, the creation of a centre dedicated to non-Canadian artists drew criticism from Canadian Artists' Representation, who threatened to protest the opening of the centre.

The museum was expanded again in 1993, creating 9,290.3 square metres (100,000 sq ft) of new space and 17,651.6 square metres (190,000 sq ft) of renovated space, increasing the preexisting floorspace by 30 %. The expansion saw the renovation of 20 galleries and the construction of 30 galleries. In 1978, the museum's staff unionized under the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.

During the 1990s, the museum drafted plans that would have seen the development of a pedestrian mall from University Avenue to the art gallery. However, conflicting developments on adjacent properties, lack of support from the City of Toronto government, and the eventual development of another renovation plan by architect Frank Gehry saw the museum's plans for a pedestrian mall abandoned in the early 2000s.

In 1996, Canadian multi-media artist Jubal Brown vandalized Raoul Dufy 's Harbor at le Havre in the Art Gallery of Ontario by deliberately vomiting primary colours on it.

Under the direction of then-CEO Matthew Teitelbaum, the museum embarked on a CA$ 254 million (later increased to CA$276 million ) redevelopment plan by Frank Gehry in 2004, called Transformation AGO. Although Gehry was born in Toronto, the redevelopment of the museum complex would be his first work in Canada. The project initially drew some criticism. As an expansion, rather than a new creation, concerns were raised that the structure would not look like a Gehry signature building, and that the opportunity to build an entirely new gallery, perhaps on Toronto's waterfront, was being squandered. During the course of the redevelopment planning, board member and patron Joey Tanenbaum temporarily resigned his position over concerns about donor recognition, design issues surrounding the new building, as well as the cost of the project. The public rift was subsequently healed.

Kenneth Thomson was a major benefactor of Transformation AGO, donating much of his art collection to the gallery (providing large contributions to the European and Canadian collections), in addition to providing CA$ 50 million towards the renovation, as well as a CA$20 million endowment. Thomson died in 2006, two years before the project was complete.

In 2015, the Canadian Jewish News reported 46 paintings and sculptures in the museum's possession held "a gap in provenance," with the history of their ownership from the years 1933 and 1945 having disappeared, coinciding with the Third Reich 's existence. The museum publishes spoliation research on its public website.

In 2018, the museum formally changed the name of Emily Carr 's 1929 The Indian Church painting to Church at Yuquot Village in an effort to remove culturally insensitive language from the title of works in its collection. A note next to the painting provides the original name of the piece and explains Carr's use of the term was in keeping with "the language of her era". The museum has also reviewed the titles of several other works on a case-by-case basis, as items from the Canadian collection are rotated from storage to exhibition or vice versa.

In May 2019, the museum revised its admission model, offering free entry to visitors 25 years of age and under and a CA$35 pass for all others, which provides admission to the museum for the entire year.

The painting, Still Life with Flowers by Jan van Kessel the Elder, was restituted to the heirs of Dagobert and Martha David in 2020, after the museum confirmed the item's provenance and that the David family was forced to sell the item during the Second World War. Following its forced sale, the painting was resold to a Canadian, who later donated the piece to the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1995.

In 2022, Selldorf Architects, Diamond Schmitt Architects and Two Row Architects were contracted by the museum to design a new gallery space for contemporary art. The proposed expansion, later named the Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery, will be built above the museum's existing loading dock and will connect to the rest of the complex at four points. Spanning five floors, the addition will feature a column-free gallery design, and would add 3,700 square metres (40,000 sq ft) to the building, and would be the building's seventh major expansion.

The Art Gallery of Ontario has hosted and organized a number of temporary and travelling exhibitions in its galleries. A select list of exhibitions from 1994 to 2019 include:

- From Cézanne to Matisse : Great French Paintings from The Barnes Foundation (1994)

- Treasures from the Hermitage Museum, Russia: Rubens and His Age (2001)