Art Gallery of Hamilton
Ontario's third-largest public art gallery, with over 10,000 Canadian, European and contemporary works
The Art Gallery of Hamilton was founded on 31 January 1914 after the painter William Blair Bruce's family gave the city a group of his works, and it is the third-largest public art gallery in Ontario. The permanent collection now exceeds 10,000 items in three broad areas: Canadian art, including work by Indigenous artists; international art, strongest in European painting from the Baroque to Post-Impressionism; and contemporary art. The Tanenbaum collection of nineteenth-century French and British painting came to the gallery in 2002.
The present building on King Street West opened in October 1977 to a design by the Hamilton architect Trevor Garwood-Jones, whose scheme of blank concrete volumes won an Ontario Association of Architects award. A renovation completed in 2005 under Bruce Kuwabara of Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg wrapped the concrete in gold-toned steel panels, reordered the entrance and added a sculpture garden, giving the gallery a more open relation to the street and to nearby Hamilton Place.
Highlights
- William Blair Bruce's The Phantom Hunter, the gallery's founding gift
- Tanenbaum collection of nineteenth-century French and British painting
- Gold-toned steel cladding added in the 2005 renovation
- Free admission on Thursdays, when the gallery stays open late
