Art Gallery of Ontario
Frank Gehry-transformed art museum on Dundas Street with a major Canadian and European collection
The Art Gallery of Ontario is one of the largest art museums in North America, holding a collection of roughly 120,000 works spanning the first century of the present era to the present day. It began in 1900 as the Art Museum of Toronto, a private association, and moved in 1913 to the grounds of The Grange, a Georgian house of 1817 that was bequeathed to it and which still forms part of the complex. Purpose-built galleries opened in 1918, and the institution took its present name in 1966.
The building has been enlarged repeatedly. The best-known intervention is the 2008 Transformation AGO by Frank Gehry, who grew up nearby: it added a 180-metre glass and Douglas fir facade along Dundas Street West, a spiralling timber-and-steel staircase and a blue titanium-clad south wing overlooking Grange Park. Collection strengths include Canadian historical and modern art, the Thomson collection of ship models and European objects, the largest public holding of Henry Moore sculpture, Indigenous and African art, photography and contemporary work.
Highlights
- Frank Gehry's glass and Douglas fir Galleria Italia along Dundas Street
- Henry Moore Sculpture Centre, the largest public Moore collection
- The Grange, a Georgian house of 1817 attached to the gallery
- Canadian galleries with Group of Seven and Tom Thomson paintings
