Winnipeg Art Gallery
The Winnipeg Art Gallery is an art museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Its permanent collection includes over 24,000 works from Canadian, Indigenous Canadian, and international artists. The museum also holds the world's largest collection of Inuit art. In addition to exhibits for its collection, the museum has organized and hosted a number of travelling arts exhibitions. Its building complex consists of a main building that includes of indoor space and the adjacent Qaumajuq building.
The present institution was formally incorporated in 1963, although it traces its origins to the Winnipeg Museum of Fine Arts, an art museum opened to the public in 1912 by the Winnipeg Development and Industrial Bureau. The bureau opened the Winnipeg School of Arts in the following year, and operated the art museum and art school until 1923, when the two entities were incorporated as the Winnipeg Gallery and School of Arts. In 1926, the Winnipeg Art Gallery Association was formed to assist the institution in operating its museum component. The Winnipeg Gallery and School of Art was dissolved in 1950, although its collection was loaned indefinitely to the Winnipeg Art Gallery Association, who continued to exhibit it.
In 1963, the Winnipeg Art Gallery Association was formally incorporated as the Winnipeg Art Gallery by the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba. The museum moved to its present location in September 1971, with the opening of a purpose-built building designed by Gustavo da Roza. In 2021, the museum opened a Michael Maltzan-designed Qaumajuq building in order to house the museum's Inuit art collection.
History
Background
The city's first serious art gallery was first opened in the former Manitoba Hotel, located at Main and Water Ave. An area of the hotel was set aside for an art studio. The art gallery was organized by Cora Moore, who upon return from a trip to Toronto, organized a Winnipeg branch of the Women's Art Association of Canada and subsequently an artists group for men. The first art exhibit took place in February 1895. The art gallery featured art from artists from Manitoba, as well as Toronto, Montreal, New York, London, and Paris. The art gallery was shut down after the Manitoba Hotel burned down in 1899.Efforts to create another art museum began in 1902, after the Manitoba Society of Artists was formed, and its members began to lobby for the creation of a provincial civic and arts institution. In addition to the Manitoba Society of Artists, the Winnipeg-branch of the Western Art Association adopted a mandate that promoted the creation of an art museum to art from Manitoba, and the rest of Canada in 1908.
Grounds
The main property the Winnipeg Art Gallery presently occupies was acquired in 1967. The museum's main building was opened on the property on 25 September 1971. In 1995, the property was expanded after the museum acquired the former Medical Mall south of the main building. In 2017, the former Medical Mall was demolished to make way for Qaumajuq, a building centred around Inuit art. The main building and Qaumajuq will be connected by a skyway between the two buildings.Main building
The main building for the Winnipeg Art Gallery was opened in September 1971 and was designed by Gustavo da Roza in a late-modernist style. During the design and construction process, da Roza partnered with Number Ten Architects, who provided architectural drafting and project management.The building's exterior was designed as an iceberg-shaped "triangular mass," with an austere low silhouette, and almost no windows throughout its exterior. The building's exterior walls are sloped to reflect sunlight, and uses "aggressive" geometric angles. A wedge that protrudes from the "main mass" forms the entrance to the main building. Most of the building was built from poured-in-place, reinforced concrete and clad in Tyndall stone. According to da Roza, the use of Tyndall stone for the load-bearing wall was selected to help affirm the "character of northern prairie environment." Tyndall stone is also used extensively for the walls and floor of the interior, and the lounges in the building's second floor.
The interior of the gallery was designed to help maintain and preserve works exhibited in the building and includes mechanical systems that maintain the atmosphere of the building at an appropriate temperature and humidity for the works. As a result of the building's angular shape, nearly every room in the building has a different shape from the other rooms in the building. The interior of the building features of exhibition space. Most of the building's viewing galleries are located on the third floor, which also features a skylight set from the building's rooftop garden; whereas the mezzanine level is dedicated to smaller exhibition spaces, the museum's library, and offices.
The ground level, known as Main Hall, is a large space sheathed in saw-cut Tyndall stone and houses the museum's gift shop, conservation lab, the main lobby, and a 320-seat auditorium complete this level. The museum's access to the rooftop garden are located on the building's fourth floor, while its storage for its collections are located in the building's basement. The total indoor area of the building is.
Qaumajuq
The museum property is also home to Qaumajuq, a four-storey building, situated to the south of the main building at Memorial Boulevard and St. Mary Avenue. Michael Maltzan, the principal architect for Michael Maltzan Architecture, was contracted to design the building in 2012. PCL Construction was contracted to construct the building. Construction for the building began in late May 2018, after the former building that occupied the site, the Medical Mall, was demolished in 2017. The building opened in March 2021.The design of Qaumajuq was intended to both complement the existing main building, as well as reflect where most of the works intended to be housed in the building originated from. The building's exterior is clad in glass and off-white stone, although concrete and steel were also used as building materials. The building will feature 22 recessed skylights approximately above the floor. The skylights are designed to emit light on its exterior side, glowing "like a lantern".
A curved design is used throughout the interior, as a reflection of Northern Canada's "openness". The building's atrium features a serpentine steel frame of the building's three-storey visible storage for works for items in the Inuit collection not on exhibit. The visible storage is adjacent to the building's entrance on the corner of St. Mary's Avenue and Memorial Boulevard, with a lecture room, café, and reading room adjacent to the building's atrium. The building's second level includes a 90-seat theatre, a library, and a learning commons on the second floor. Most of the museum's exhibition space is located on the building's third floor, which has approximately of exhibition space. Five indoor, and two outdoor art studios are situated on the buildings' uppermost level. The upper roof level of the building is also designed to provide space for exhibitions, public performances.
Permanent collection
As of March 2015, the Winnipeg Art Gallery's permanent collection includes over 24,000 works from Canadian and international artists. Approximately 70 percent of the permanent collection was gifted to the museum by private donors. Summer Afternoon, the Prairie by Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald was the first work purchased by the museum for its permanent collection.The collection is organized into several collection areas, Canadian art, decorative arts, Inuit art, international art, photography, and works on paper. The photography collection was made a specialized area of its permanent collection during the 1980s. Its photography collection includes 1,400 works, most of which originated from Canadian artists in the latter half of the 20th century. The museum's works on paper collection contains approximately 6,000 items in its collection, encompassing historical to contemporary works by international artists, and Canadian artists, whose works make up the majority of the works on prints collection.
Canadian art
The museum's Canadian collection includes works from Canadian artists dating back to the 1820s to the present day. The museum's permanent collection includes 200 works by Canadian artists from 1820 to 1910. Work by Canadian artists prior to the 20th century in the museum's collection include those created by Maurice Cullen, Mary Riter Hamilton, John A. Hammond, Robert Harris, Otto Reinhold Jacobi, Paul Kane, Cornelius Krieghoff, James Wilson Morrice, Lucius Richard O'Brien, William Raphael, George Agnew Reid, Peter Rindisbacher, Frederick Arthur Verner, and Homer Watson.The collection also features a sizable collection of Canadian modern art including works by artists of the Winnipeg Gallery and School of Art, Painters Eleven, and the Regina Five. The museum's Canadian modern art collection also includes several works from the Group of Seven, including over 1,000 works from Group of Seven member Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald. Other works in the collection by modern Canadian artists include Bertram Brooker, Emily Carr, Charles Comfort, Ivan Eyre, Prudence Heward, William Kurelek, David Milne, Walter J. Phillips, Tony Tascona and William H. Lobchuk and other printmakers of the Grand Western Canadian Screen Shop.
The museum's also has a collection contemporary art from Canadian artists, most of which is made up equally of prints and paintings, although it also includes collages, drawings, installations, sculptures, and videos. The museum's collection of contemporary Canadian art includes works by Eleanor Bond, Aganetha Dyck, Cliff Eyland, Wanda Koop, Janet Werner, and the Royal Art Lodge.