National Gallery of Canada
Canada’s national art museum, in a glass-and-granite building by Moshe Safdie.
The National Gallery of Canada is the country's national art museum, founded in 1880 by the Governor General, the Marquess of Lorne, together with the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. For more than a century it occupied a series of temporary homes, including rooms in the Victoria Memorial Museum Building, before moving to its present purpose-built premises on Sussex Drive in 1988. The site stands on a promontory above the Ottawa River, close to Parliament Hill and facing Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica across the street.
The building was designed by the architect Moshe Safdie. A long glazed colonnade rises gently from the entrance pavilion to the Great Hall, a lofty glass-and-granite space whose faceted crown echoes the Library of Parliament visible across the water. Inside, galleries are arranged around two landscaped courtyards, and the building also contains the reconstructed interior of the nineteenth-century Rideau Street Chapel, rescued from demolition and reinstalled within the museum. Louise Bourgeois's giant spider sculpture Maman stands on the plaza outside.
The collection covers Canadian and Indigenous art, European and American art from the Middle Ages onwards, contemporary international art, prints and drawings, and photography, the latter strengthened by the holdings of the former Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. Among its best-known strengths are works by the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson. The Gallery organises a programme of temporary exhibitions in Ottawa, lends and tours works across Canada, and presents the annual Sobey Art Award exhibition for contemporary Canadian artists.
Highlights
- Moshe Safdie's glass-crowned Great Hall overlooking the Ottawa River
- Reconstructed interior of the 19th-century Rideau Street Chapel
- Extensive Canadian and Indigenous collections, including the Group of Seven
- Louise Bourgeois's giant spider sculpture Maman on the forecourt
- Free Thursday evening openings from 17:00 to 20:00
