Art Gallery of Ontario facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Art Gallery of Ontario

Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario
Dundas Street façade of the AGO in 2023
Established	1900; 125 years ago (1900)
Location	317 Dundas Street West Toronto, Ontario M5T 1G4
Type	Art museum
Visitors	321,664 (2021) 1st most visited nationally 93rd most-visited globally
Public transit access	St. Patrick  505

The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), also known as the Musée des beaux-arts de l'Ontario in French, is a big art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It's located in the Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, on Dundas Street West. The museum building is huge, covering about 45,000 square meters (484,376 square feet). This makes it one of the biggest art museums in North America.

Besides its many art display areas, the AGO also has a special studio for artists who are working there, places to eat, event halls, a gift shop, a library, and a research center. There's also a theatre for talks and workshops.

The museum started in 1900 as the Art Museum of Toronto. It officially became a museum in 1903. Its name changed to the Art Gallery of Toronto in 1919, and then to the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1966. The museum took over a historic house called The Grange in 1911. Since then, it has grown a lot with many additions and updates to the building. Famous architects like Frank Gehry have helped design its expansions.

The AGO has a permanent collection of over 120,000 artworks. These pieces range from the first century all the way to today. The collection includes art from Canadian, First Nations, Inuit, African, European, and Oceanic artists. The museum also hosts many special art shows that travel from other places.

As of April 2024, the museum is temporarily closed because about 400 workers are on strike.

History of the AGO

A south view of the first expansion building in 1922

The Art Gallery of Ontario began in 1900. It was founded by a group of private citizens and artists from the Toronto Society of Arts. Some of the important people who helped start it were George A. Cox, Lady Eaton, and Sir Joseph W. Flavelle.

The government of Ontario officially recognized the museum in 1903. This law gave the museum the power to buy land for its building. Before finding a permanent home, the museum showed its art in rented spaces at the Toronto Public Library.

The museum got its current home after Harriet Boulton Smith passed away in 1909. She left her historic 1817 Georgian mansion, The Grange, to the gallery. The Grange officially opened as the art museum in June 1913. In 1911, the museum also agreed with the city of Toronto to keep the land south of The Grange as a public park, now called Grange Park.

In 1916, the museum started building a new gallery designed by Darling and Pearson. The first new galleries next to The Grange opened in 1918. The next year, the museum changed its name to the Art Gallery of Toronto. This was to avoid confusion with the Royal Ontario Museum, which also had art. In 1920, the museum allowed the Ontario College of Art to build on its grounds. The museum grew again in 1924, adding a sculpture court and its main entrance on Dundas Street. More galleries were added in 1935, partly paid for by the Eaton's department store.

In 1965, the museum's collection of European and Canadian art grew with 340 new pieces. In 1966, the museum changed its name to the Art Gallery of Ontario. This showed its new role as the main art museum for the entire province.

The museum's exterior façade in 1960

In the 1970s, the museum expanded its gallery space again. The first part of this expansion finished in 1974 with the opening of the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre. This center was dedicated to a famous non-Canadian artist, which caused some artists in Canada to express concerns.

The museum expanded once more in 1993, adding 9,290 square meters (100,000 square feet) of new space. This included 30 new galleries and updated 20 existing ones. In 1978, the museum's staff formed a union.

In the 1990s, the museum thought about creating a walking area from University Avenue to the gallery. However, these plans were dropped in the early 2000s.

From 2004 to 2008, the museum went through a huge redevelopment project. This project, called Transformation AGO, cost about $276 million. It was led by the famous Canadian-born architect Frank Gehry. This was Gehry's first project in Canada. Some people worried that the new building wouldn't look like a typical Gehry design because it was an expansion, not a brand new building.

Kenneth Thomson was a very important supporter of this project. He gave a large part of his art collection to the gallery. He also donated $50 million for the renovation and another $20 million to help the museum in the long term. Thomson passed away in 2006, two years before the project was finished.

In 2015, the museum started checking the history of some of its paintings and sculptures. They wanted to make sure these artworks weren't taken unfairly, especially between 1933 and 1945, during World War II. The museum shares its findings on its website.

In 2018, the museum changed the name of Emily Carr's 1929 painting The Indian Church to Church at Yuquot Village. This was done to remove words that are now seen as culturally insensitive. A note next to the painting explains the original name and why it was used back then. The museum continues to review other artwork titles.

In May 2019, the museum changed its entry rules. Now, visitors aged 25 and under can enter for free. Others can buy a $35 pass that allows them to visit the museum for a whole year.

In 2020, a painting called Still Life with Flowers by Jan van Kessel the Elder was returned to the family of Dagobert and Martha David. The museum found that the David family was forced to sell the painting during World War II. After that, it was sold to a Canadian who later gave it to the AGO in 1995.

Selected Exhibitions Since 1994

Advertisement for King Tut: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs exhibition hosted in 2009

Advertisement on a structural pillar for the last week of the Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée Picasso Paris exhibition hosted in 2012

The Art Gallery of Ontario has hosted many temporary and travelling exhibitions. Here are some of them:

Museum Complex

The museum complex includes two buildings, The Grange (right foreground), and the main building expansion to the north and west of it

The museum's land was acquired in 1911 when The Grange and the land around it were given to the museum. The Grange manor opened as the museum's first building in 1913. Since then, the museum has grown with many additions to the north and west of The Grange. New parts of the museum opened in 1918, 1926, 1935, 1974, 1977, 1993, and 2008.

The museum complex covers about 45,000 square meters (484,376 square feet). It has two main parts: The Grange, and the larger main building that was built around it. After the main building was updated in 2008, the museum now has 12,000 square meters (129,167 square feet) of dedicated gallery space.

The museum also owns the land directly south of The Grange, which is Grange Park. This land is kept as a public park forever by the City of Toronto, thanks to an agreement with the museum.

The Grange

The Grange and its western wings

The Grange is a historic house built in 1817. It's the oldest part of the museum complex. The building has two and a half floors and is made of stone, brick, wood, and glass. It was designed in a Neoclassical style, but it also has the balanced look of Georgian-style buildings from that time.

The Grange was first a private home. Its owners changed it several times before it became an art museum. For example, wings were added to the west side in the 1840s and 1885. Even though the museum expanded the complex around it, The Grange itself didn't change much for about 50 years. As part of a 1967–1973 expansion, the museum restored The Grange to how it looked in the 1830s and turned it into a historic house. It was used as a historic house for a while, then became an exhibition space and a lounge for museum members.

The Norma Ridley Members' Lounge inside The Grange

The Grange was named a National Historic Site of Canada in 1970. The City of Toronto also protected it in 1991 under the Ontario Heritage Act. In 2005, the city and the museum agreed to keep certain parts of The Grange's inside and outside unchanged forever.

Main Building

The main museum building is located north and west of The Grange. It first opened in 1918 and has been expanded and updated many times since. Plans for this "main building" started in 1912. The architects, Darling and Pearson, had to plan carefully because The Grange and the park south of it needed to be preserved.

The original design included 30 viewing halls around three open courtyards. This design was similar to another building by Darling and Pearson, the Royal Ontario Museum. The plan was to build it in three stages, but the last stage was never completed. The first part of the building was finished in 1918, adding a wing with three galleries next to The Grange.

The second part opened in 1926. It included half of the sculpture court (now called Walker Court), two more galleries, and a main entrance to the north. The outside of this 1926 part was just brick and stucco. The museum planned to cover it with stone later, but this "temporary façade" stayed until the early 1990s. More expansions to the east and west were finished in 1935.

Late-20th Century Expansions

Western façade of the main building from Beverley Street, prior to the 2004–2008 redevelopment. The western portion of the building opened in 1977.

The museum started another series of expansions in the 1970s. The first part of this plan was finished in 1974. It included restoring The Grange and opening the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre. Henry Moore himself helped design this center, choosing the size, colors, and adding a skylight for natural light. This center changed very little during later museum expansions.

The second part of the expansion opened in 1977, adding new galleries near Beverley Street. The third part was delayed until 1986. A competition was held for architects to design the museum's southwest and northern parts, including covering the "temporary façade" on Dundas Street. A design by Barton Myers was chosen, and KPMB Architects completed the work. This expansion opened in 1993, adding 9,290 square meters (100,000 square feet) of new space and 30 new galleries. After these changes, the museum had about 38,400 square meters (413,334 square feet) of indoor space.

2004–2008 Redevelopment

The South Gallery Block from Grange Park

From 2004 to 2008, the museum building underwent a $276 million renovation led by architect Frank Gehry. Gehry's job was to expand and refresh the museum, not build a new one. One challenge was connecting the different parts of the building, which had become a "hodgepodge" after six previous expansions. This project was Gehry's first design that didn't use a highly twisted steel frame for support.

The outside of the building facing Dundas Street changed. The main entrance moved to the north, lining up with Walker Court. A 200-meter (656-foot) long glass and wood canopy, called the "Galleria Italia," was added. The roof of Walker Court was also updated with steel beams and glued laminated timber to support a glass roof, providing 325 square meters (3,498 square feet) of skylight. The southern part of the museum also got a new five-story South Gallery block and a spiral staircase connecting the fourth and fifth floors. The outside of the South Gallery Block uses glass and special titanium panels.

Interior

Exterior

The titanium and glass staircase protruding from the South Gallery Block.

Wood was used a lot in this renovation, for the hardwood floors, information desks, ticket booths, and stairs, including a spiral staircase in Walker Court. The wood used was mostly Douglas fir.

The updated building opened in November 2008. The renovation increased the museum's total size by 20 percent, reaching 45,000 square meters (484,376 square feet). The space for viewing art also grew by 47 percent. A large event space called Baillie Court now takes up the entire third floor of the south tower.

Galleria Italia

The Galleria Italia is a 200-meter (656-foot) long canopy made of glass, steel, and wood. It sticks out from the front of the building on Dundas Street and also serves as a viewing hall on the second floor. It was named after a $13 million donation from 26 Italian-Canadian families in Toronto.

The ends of the glass and wood canopy extend past the building, making it look like the building's front is being pulled open. The Galleria Italia is made of 200 meters (656 feet) of glued laminated timber and glass. About 1,800 pieces of glued laminated timber were used, and each piece is unique because of the gallery's special curved design.

The galleria has two layers. The inner layer has 47 vertical arches that get wider as they get closer to the main entrance. These arches help support the outer layer, which is a wood and glass grid. Both layers sit on a steel frame. The wood pieces were mostly made from Douglas fir trees from British Columbia.

The galleria uses 128 horizontal steel beams to keep the arches from twisting. Since the museum keeps a steady humidity level, the steel used to support the wood needed a special coating to prevent rust.

2010s and 2020s Renovations

The museum opened the Weston Family Learning Centre in October 2011. This 3,252 square meter (35,000 square foot) space is an art exploration center. It has a hands-on area for children, a youth center, and an art workshop. In April 2012, the museum opened the David Milne Study Centre, which cost about C$1 million. The South Entrance and lounge outside the library opened in July 2017. The updated J. S. McLean Centre for Indigenous & Canadian Art opened in July 2018.

In 2022, Selldorf Architects was hired to design a new gallery space for modern art. This planned expansion, called the Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery, would add 3,716 square meters (40,000 square feet) to the building. It would be the museum's seventh major expansion.

Permanent Collection

The Tannenbaum Centre for European Art viewing hall, one of several areas used to exhibit's the museum's European art.

The AGO's permanent collection has grown a lot since the late 1900s. In 1960, it had 3,400 artworks, and by 1985, it had 10,700. As of March 2021, the AGO has over 120,000 pieces of art. These artworks cover many different art styles and time periods. The collection is organized into different areas, usually by art form, artist, or where the art came from. Until the early 1980s, the museum mainly collected art from Canadian or European artists. Now, its collection also includes art from Indigenous peoples in Canada and other cultures worldwide.

The museum's African collection has 95 artworks, mostly from the 19th century Sahara region. These pieces are shown in a permanent gallery on the second floor. Most of them were given to the museum by Murray Frum, starting in 1972. The museum also has some Ethiopian Orthodox artworks, which are part of the Thomson Collection.

Snuff bottles from the museum's Kenneth Thomson collection

In 2002, the museum received 1,000 artworks by Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islanders artists. Some of these are displayed on the second floor. In 2004, Kenneth Thomson donated over 2,000 artworks from his personal collection to the museum. While most of these are by Canadian or European artists, the collection also includes works from other parts of the world.

Canadian Art

The museum has a very large collection of Canadian art, from before Canada became a country up to the 1990s. Most of this art is displayed on the second floor. There are 39 viewing halls showing 1,447 pieces from the Canadian collection. This includes 23 halls for the Thomson Collection of Canadian Art and 14 halls for the J.S. Mclean Centre for Indigenous & Canadian Art. Canadian artworks are also shown in the David Milne Centre and a visible storage area in the museum's lower level.

Mail Boat Landing at Quebec by Cornelius Krieghoff (1860). It is one of 145 works by Krieghoff in the Thomson Collection of Canadian Art.

The Thomson Collection of Canadian Art shows a deep look at individual artists' works. The other halls are organized by themes. The Thomson Collection was given to the museum by Kenneth Thomson in January 2004. It has almost 650 paintings and works by Canadian artists. This includes 250 works by Tom Thomson, 145 by Cornelius Krieghoff, and 168 by David Milne, plus pieces by the Group of Seven.

Works by David Milne are also in the David Milne Study Centre. This center opened in 2012 and has computers linked to Milne's digital archives. It also shows films about his life. The center holds 230 of Milne's artifacts, like diaries and paint boxes, mostly given by his son in 2009.

The J.S. McLean Centre for Indigenous & Canadian Art displays 132 works from Canadian and Indigenous artists. About 40 percent of the art in this center is by Indigenous artists. The McLean Centre is 1,208 square meters (13,000 square feet) and has 14 viewing halls. Three of these galleries are for Inuit art, and one is for modern First Nations art.

The West Wind by Tom Thomson (1917). The Canadian collection includes several works by Thomson.

Art in the McLean Centre is grouped by big themes related to Canadian history, not just by date. This way, works from Indigenous and Canadian artists are shown together. This helps to show how the two cultures influenced each other and sometimes conflicted. For example, when Tom Thomson's The West Wind was shown, it was displayed with Anishinaabe pouches nearby. This showed how both peoples viewed northern Ontario at that time. The descriptions for artworks in the center are in English, French, and either Anishinaabemowin or Inuktitut. The walls at the entrance to the McLean Centre have small arrowheads, spear points, and knives from 9,000 BCE to 1,000 CE. These are part of an art display, not an archaeological one.

Landscape paintings by Canadian artists were some of the first pieces the museum collected. The museum's Canadian collection has works from many artists, including Jack Bush, Paul-Émile Borduas, Kazuo Nakamura, and members of the Group of Seven. The museum has over 300 works by David Milne, with 168 of them from the Thomson Collection. It also has almost 150 works from A. Y. Jackson, though most are in storage. The collection also features works from Canadian sculptors Frances Loring, Esmaa Mohamoud, and Florence Wyle.

The museum also has a large collection of Inuit artworks. The first Inuit art was added in the 1970s. The Art Gallery of Ontario acquired the Sarick Collection, the Isaacs Reference Collection, and the Klamer Collection during the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1988, the museum created the Inuit Collections Committee to care for and grow this collection. It includes 2,800 sculptures, 1,300 prints, and 700 drawings and wall hangings by Inuit artists. About 500 of these works are shown in the Inuit Visible Storage Gallery, which opened in 2013.

The museum didn't get its first First Nations artwork until 1979, a piece by Norval Morrisseau. This was to avoid having the same art as the Royal Ontario Museum, which already had a collection of First Nations art. In the early 2000s, the museum increased the number of First Nations artworks in its Canadian galleries. First Nations artists whose works are in the museum's collection include Charles Edenshaw and Shelley Niro.

Contemporary Art

An exhibit hall on the fourth floor of the south gallery block. Exhibits on the upper three levels of the block house contemporary art exhibits.

The museum's contemporary art collection includes works from international artists from the 1960s to today, and Canadian artists from the 1990s to today. This collection also includes installations, photography, graphic art (like posters), film, video art, and even minimal music. These works are shown in several areas throughout the museum, including the Vivian & David Campbell Centre for Contemporary Art, which takes up the top three floors of the south gallery block, and the Galleria Italia.

The museum's contemporary collection has works by Canadian artists like General Idea, Brian Jungen, Liz Magor, Michael Snow, and Jeff Wall. It also has works by international artists from movements like Arte Povera, conceptualism, minimalism, neo-expressionism, pop art, and postminimalism. Artists from these movements whose works are in the collection include Jim Dine, Donald Judd, Mona Hatoum, Pierre Huyghe, John McCracken, Claes Oldenburg, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Andy Warhol, and Lawrence Weiner.

The museum also has a permanent exhibit of Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirror Room – Let's Survive Forever. This special room was bought in 2018 for C$2 million after a larger Kusama exhibit was very popular. The permanent Infinity Room opened in May 2019.

European Art

Scale model of HMS Hogue on display in the museum's concourse.

The museum has a large collection of European art from 1000 CE to 1900 CE. These artworks are displayed in several viewing halls throughout the museum. The Tannenbaum Centre for European Art and its halls are on the ground floor. Paintings and sculptures from the Thomson Collection of European Art are also on the ground floor, while ship models from the Thomson collection are in the museum's lower level.

The European Collection includes the Margaret and Ian Ross Collection, which has many bronze sculptures and medals, especially from the Baroque art period in Italy. The museum's collection of European paintings and sculptures grew even more in January 2004 when it received the Thomson Collection of European Art. This collection has over 900 objects, including 130 ship models.

The Thomson Collection of European Art has the world's largest collection of Gothic boxwood miniatures. These are tiny, detailed carvings, including 10 carved beads and two altarpieces. Other works in the Thomson Collection for European Art include Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens. This painting was bought by Ken Thomson in 2002 for C$115 million. At the time, it was the most expensive Old Master painting ever sold at an art auction. Thomson wanted this painting to be the main piece of the collections he gave to the museum in 2004. When the museum reopened in 2008, the painting was in a special, dimly lit, blood-red room with no other paintings. The only light was on the artwork. It stayed there until 2017 when it was moved to a gallery with other European artworks.

In 2019, the museum bought the painting Iris Bleus, Jardin du Petit Gennevilliers by Gustave Caillebotte for over C$1 million. This is only the second painting by Caillebotte to be in a Canadian art museum's permanent collection. The museum's European collection also has major works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Giovanni del Biondo, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, Paul Gauguin, Frans Hals, Claude Monet, Angelo Piò, Nino Pisano, Rembrandt, Auguste Rodin, and James Tissot.

Modern Art

Sculptures on display in the Joey & Toby Tanenbaum Sculpture Atrium

The museum's modern art collection includes works from American and European artists from the 1900s to the 1960s. Canadian artists from this time are usually part of the Canadian collection. Modern art is shown in several areas, including the Joey & Toby Tanenbaum Sculpture Atrium, the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre, and other galleries on the ground floor.

Sculptures on display in the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre, which exhibits several works by Henry Moore.

The museum has the largest public collection of works by Henry Moore. Most of these are in the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre. The museum set aside about 3,000 square meters (32,292 square feet) for his sculptures, including the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre and the Irina Moore Gallery. Moore donated 300 pieces, almost his entire personal collection, to the museum in 1974. He promised this donation in 1968, on the condition that the museum build a special gallery just for his works. The museum also bought another piece, Two Large Forms, from him in 1973. This sculpture was first placed outside the museum near Dundas and McCaul streets, but it was moved to Grange Park in 2017 during the park's renovation.

The museum's modern collection also includes works by Pierre Bonnard, Constantin Brâncuși, Marc Chagall, Otto Dix, Jean Dubuffet, Jacob Epstein, Helen Frankenthaler, Alberto Giacometti, Natalia Goncharova, Arshile Gorky, Barbara Hepworth, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Henri Matisse, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, Amedeo Modigliani, Claude Monet, Ben Nicholson, Pablo Picasso, Gino Severini, and Yves Tanguy.

Photography Collection

Madura [sic]. The Great Pagoda, Mootoo Alaghur and East Gopurum from Tank, by Linnaeus Tripe (1858), part of the museum's photography collection.

In 2019, the Art Gallery of Ontario had a photography collection of 70,000 photographs. These photos date from the 1840s to today. The collection includes 495 photo albums from the First World War. Photos from this collection are shown in two viewing halls on the ground floor.

In 2017, the museum acquired 522 photographs by Diane Arbus. This gave the museum the largest collection of Arbus's photos outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In June 2019, the museum acquired the Montgomery Collection of Caribbean Photos. This collection has 3,500 historic photographs of the Caribbean from the 1840s to the 1940s. The museum bought this collection for $300,000, with most of the money coming from 27 donors from Toronto's Caribbean community. The Montgomery Collection is the largest of its kind outside the Caribbean. Other photographers whose works are in the collection include Edward Burtynsky, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Robert J. Flaherty, Suzy Lake, Arnold Newman, Henryk Ross, Josef Sudek, Linnaeus Tripe, and Garry Winogrand.

Prints and Drawings Collection

A drawing by Peter Rindisbacher (1825), part of the museum's prints and drawings collection

The museum's prints and drawings collection has more than 20,000 prints, drawings, and other works on paper. These pieces date from the 1400s to today. This collection is usually displayed in small parts through changing exhibitions. However, you can view the collection by making an appointment at the museum's Marvin Gelber Print and Drawing Study Centre.

The collection includes the largest and most important group of works by Betty Goodwin. Most of these works were given to the gallery by the artist herself. In 2015, the museum received 170 drawings, prints, and sculptures by Käthe Kollwitz. The prints and drawings collection also includes drawings by David Blackwood, François Boucher, John Constable, Greg Curnoe, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Thomas Gainsborough, Paul Gauguin, Wassily Kandinsky, Michelangelo, David Milne, Pablo Picasso, Egon Schiele, Michael Snow, Walter Trier, Vincent van Gogh, and Frederick Varley. It also has prints by Ernst Barlach, James Gillray, Francisco Goya, Käthe Kollwitz, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Rembrandt, Thomas Rowlandson, Stanley Spencer, James Tissot, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and James McNeill Whistler.

Library and Archives

The Art Gallery of Ontario also has the Edward P. Taylor Library & Archives. The library and archives are open to the public, and you don't need to pay to enter. However, to access the museum's archives and special collections, you need to schedule an appointment. The library also serves as an art history library for OCAD University.

Library

Work tables at the Edward P. Taylor Library & Archives, the art gallery's library and archives

The library's main collections match the art in the Art Gallery of Ontario and its public programs. It has over 300,000 books for general art information and academic research in art history. The library is a reference library, meaning you can't check out materials. Its holdings cover Western art from the medieval period to the 21st century, art from Canada's Indigenous peoples (including Inuit art), and African and Oceanian art.

The library also has Canadian, American, and European art journals and newspapers. It has over 50,000 art sales and auction catalogs from the late 18th century to today. There are 40,000 files with information on Canadian art and artists, and international contemporary artists. It also has multimedia, digital, and microform collections. You can search for materials using the online catalog. The Library & Archives also creates guides and lists of books for research, like the Thomson Collection Resource Guide for the large art collection donated by Kenneth Thomson.

The library's rare books collection includes art history books from the 17th century to today. It also has British Neoclassical folios from the 18th century, catalogues raisonnés (complete lists of an artist's works), British and Canadian illustrated books and magazines, and travel guides.

Archives

The museum's archives keep records of the institution's history since it started in 1900, and of The Grange since 1820. This includes files about exhibitions, scrapbooks of publicity (showing gallery events), architectural plans, photographs, records of the Gallery School, and letters with art dealers, artists, collectors, and scholars. Because artist groups often held exhibitions at the Gallery, the archives are a great place to research the activities of the Group of Seven, the Canadian Group of Painters, the Ontario Society of Artists, and others.

The Art Gallery of Ontario's special collections are very important for studying visual arts in Canada. They contain over 150 different collections of archival material, dating from the early 19th century to today. These collections document artists, art dealers, collectors, artist-run galleries, and other people and groups who have shaped the Canadian art world. They also include files for the Tom Thomson Catalogue Raisonné.

Programs

Artist-in-Residence Program

The AGO has an artist-in-residence program. This program gives selected artists access to the museum's facilities, money for materials and living costs, and a dedicated studio called the Anne Lind AiR Studio in the Weston Family Learning Centre. Artists in this program are invited to create new art and ideas, using all kinds of media like painting, drawing, photography, film, video, and sound. This program is the first of its kind at a major Canadian art gallery.

Here are some past artists who have been part of this program:

Online Presence

The AGO was the first Canadian museum to be part of the Google Art Project (now called Google Arts & Culture). On this platform, you can view 166 pieces from the museum's permanent collection. These include works by Paul Gauguin, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Tom Thomson, Emily Carr, Anthony van Dyck, and Gerhard Richter. Currently, there isn't a "street view" option to tour the museum online.

Selected Works

Canadian Collection

• Tom Thomson, The West Wind, 1917

European Collection

Modern and Contemporary Collections

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See also

In Spanish: Galería de Arte de Ontario para niños

• Culture in Toronto
• List of art museums
• List of museums in Toronto
• List of works by Frank Gehry
• Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries