National Gallery of Canada facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
National Gallery of Canada

National Gallery of Canada
Established	1880 (1880)
Location	380 Sussex Drive, Ottawa Ontario, Canada K1N 9N4
Type	Art museum
Collection size	93,625
Visitors	385,576 (FY2017–18)
Architect	Moshe Safdie (1983)
Public transit access	Rideau  [[|9]]  Rideau/Hurdman

The National Gallery of Canada (in French: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada) is Canada's national art museum. It is located in Ottawa, Ontario, the capital city. The museum building is very large, covering about 46,621 square metres (501,820 sq ft). About 12,400 square metres (133,000 sq ft) of this space is used to show art. This makes it one of the biggest art museums in North America based on how much space it has for exhibits.

The museum started in 1880. It was first located in the Second Supreme Court of Canada building. In 1911, it moved to the Victoria Memorial Museum building. In 1913, the Canadian government passed a law called the National Gallery Act. This law officially said what the museum's job was as a national art museum. The museum moved again in 1960 to the Lorne building.

In 1988, the museum moved to a brand new building made just for it. This building is made of glass and granite and is on Sussex Drive. It has a great view of the Canadian Parliament buildings. The famous architect Moshe Safdie designed this building.

The museum has a huge collection of over 93,000 artworks. These works come from European, American, Asian, Canadian, and Indigenous artists. Besides showing its own collection, the museum also creates and hosts many travelling exhibitions. These shows travel to other places.

History of the National Gallery

The National Gallery was in the Second Supreme Court of Canada building from 1882 to 1911.

The National Gallery was first created in 1880. This happened when Canada's Governor General, John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll, helped start the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. In 1882, the Gallery found its first home on Parliament Hill. It was inside the Second Supreme Court of Canada building.

Eric Brown became the first director in 1910. In 1911, the Gallery moved to the Victoria Memorial Museum building. It shared this building with the National Museum of Natural Sciences. In 1913, the first National Gallery Act was passed. This law explained the Gallery's purpose and how it would get money.

During the 1920s, the building was made bigger. The art gallery got four floors and its own entrance. A special wall was built between the natural sciences museum and the National Gallery. However, the Gallery was still in a temporary space. The long-term plan was to move it to a new, permanent home. This new home would have spaces made just for showing art.

The Victoria Memorial Museum building in 1911. The National Gallery of Canada was here from 1911 to 1960.

By the 1950s, the Victoria Memorial Museum building was too small for the museum's art collection. In 1952, the museum held a contest for architects to design a permanent building. But the government at the time did not support the idea. So, the museum had to give up on the winning design.

To help the National Gallery, the government offered it the eight-story Lorne office building. The National Gallery moved into this plain office building on Elgin Street. This building has since been torn down. A new, taller office building is now in its place.

In 1962, Charles Comfort, the museum's director, faced criticism. This happened after some art in an exhibition was found to be fake. American journalists discovered that half of the works by Walter Chrysler were not real. Comfort had allowed the show even though he had been warned about the art.

In 1968, the National Museums of Canada Corporation (NMC) took over the National Gallery. In the 1970s, the NMC used money from the National Gallery to start other art galleries in different regions. The museum finished updates to the Lorne building in 1976. By 1980, it was clear the National Gallery needed to move again. The building was in poor shape and had asbestos. Also, the exhibit areas were too small. Only two percent of the art collection could be shown at one time.

After Canada's constitution was made fully Canadian in 1982, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau wanted to focus on "creating a nation." He put importance on the arts to strengthen Canadian identity. In the same year, Minister of Communications Francis Fox said the government would build new permanent homes for its national museums. This included the National Gallery and the Museum of Man. Jean Sutherland Boggs, the director of the National Gallery, was chosen to lead the building projects. Construction for the new National Gallery building on Sussex Drive began in 1985. It opened in May 1988.

The NMC stopped taking funds from the National Gallery in 1982. The National Museums of Canada officially closed down in 1987. Because of this, the National Gallery became independent again. It got back its original purpose and powers from before 1968.

The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP) was connected to the National Gallery. It started in 1985. In 1988, the CMCP's management joined with the National Gallery's. The CMCP later moved to a new spot and stayed open until 2006. Its collection of photos became part of the National Gallery's collection in 2009.

In December 2000, the National Gallery announced a discovery. They thought about 100 artworks in their collection might have been stolen by the Nazis during World War II. The gallery put pictures of these suspected stolen artworks online. This allowed their rightful owners to see them and possibly claim them. In 2006, the museum returned a painting by Édouard Vuillard to the family of Alfred Lindon. This painting, The Salon of Madame Aron, had been taken by the Nazis in 1942.

In December 2009, the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Alberta announced a three-year partnership. This meant that the Art Gallery of Alberta would show art from the National Gallery's collection. This was the first "satellite program" between the National Gallery and another museum. Similar programs started in other Canadian art galleries later on.

Marc Mayer became the museum's director in 2009. He was followed by Alexandra Suda in 2019. She was the 11th Director and CEO. Under Sasha Suda, the Gallery changed its brand, calling it Ankosé. This was to be more welcoming and work towards reconciliation. After three years, Suda left. Angela Cassie was then named interim Director and CEO in July 2022.

The Museum Building

The building is next to the Ottawa River.

The museum's current building was designed by Moshe Safdie & Associates. Building started in 1985, and it opened in 1988. The building has a total floor area of 46,621 square metres (501,820 sq ft). In 2000, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada named the National Gallery one of the top 500 buildings built in Canada in the last 1,000 years. The National Gallery of Canada is on Sussex Drive, close to the ByWard Market area. This is the fourth building to house the art museum.

A special government company, the Canadian Museums Construction Corporation, was created to build the museum. It had a budget of C$185 million. After the 1984 Canadian federal election, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney closed this company. However, since the foundation for the building was already done, Mulroney decided to keep funding the construction. The budget was lowered to C$162 million.

Outside the Building

The pink-granite walls on the building's west side.

The outside walls on the north, east, and west sides of the building are made of pink granite or glass windows. The south side has a long glass wall. This wall is held up by groups of four concrete pillars. The shape of the south side was made to look like a cathedral. The concrete pillars are used like the flying buttresses you see on Gothic cathedrals. The east part of the south side changes into a low, glass dome, which is where the main entrance is. The west part has a three-level glass dome.

The building's south side, with a glass wall held by concrete pillars, and a three-story glass dome in the southwest corner.

The three-level glass dome is made of rectangular glass pieces and thin steel supports. The second level of the dome has rectangles and triangles. These are further divided into smaller triangles. All these glass pieces are connected by steel bars. The third level of the dome has similar designs, but the glass pieces are different triangles. These triangles point upwards to the center. The building's three-level dome is placed so that the Peace Tower and the Library of Parliament appear on either side when you approach the museum from the east.

Inside the Building

The ramp in the lobby that leads to the Great Hall.

The floor of the entrance lobby is made of pink granite. It has a straight, 4-meter (13 ft) wide ramp that goes up towards the west. Safdie, the architect, said the ramp was important. He felt that visitors should "go through some kind of procession" to enter such an important place. He wanted it to feel like climbing to a special ceremony. The lobby walls are covered with rectangular pink granite, except for the south wall, which is part of the glass outside wall. A glass and steel ceiling, like those in Gothic cathedrals, covers the entire ramp. However, unlike most Gothic cathedrals, this ceiling has several concrete columns to support the roof. At the top of the ramp, you reach the Great Hall of the building, which is inside the three-story glass dome.

The museum's inner courtyard has the Taiga Garden. This garden was designed by Cornelia Oberlander. She based it on the painting Terre Sauvage by A. Y. Jackson, which is in the National Gallery's collection. The garden tries to look like the landscape in the painting, the Canadian shield. However, limestone is used instead of the granite usually found in the Canadian Shield.

Art Collection

As of October 2018, the National Gallery of Canada has over 93,625 artworks in its main collection. These works show many different art styles and times in history. The Gallery has a large and varied collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs. The first artworks the museum bought were by Canadian artists. Canadian art is still a main focus for the museum. But its collection also includes many works from artists around the world. The museum's collection has grown through buying art and receiving gifts. The museum also creates its own travelling exhibitions. These shows travel across Canada and to other countries. The National Gallery lends out more art than any other place in Canada, sending about 800 pieces a year.

Sculptures on display in the museum's sculpture courtyard in 2005.

The museum's collection of prints and drawings has 27,000 works on paper. These date from the 1400s to today. This collection includes 10,000 works on paper by Canadian artists. More than 800 of these prints and drawings were made by Inuit artists. The collection also has 2,500 drawings and 10,000 prints by American, Asian, and European artists.

The museum also has about 400 works from Asian artists. These pieces date from 200 CE to the 1800s. The museum's Asian collection started in the early 1900s. Many works came from the collection of Nasli Heeramaneck. The museum also has a collection of photographs. Many of these photos came from the former Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography.

Until the mid-1980s, the Gallery did not collect art by Indigenous peoples. This has been criticized, and it led to important changes at the gallery from the 1980s onwards. In 2003, the Canadian galleries were re-arranged to include Indigenous art for the first time. The Gallery continues to work towards showing Indigenous art more fairly, especially in the older art sections.

The largest artwork in the Gallery is the entire inside of the Rideau Street Chapel. This chapel was part of the Convent of Our Lady Sacred Heart. The chapel's inside decorations were designed by Georges Couillon in 1887. The museum bought the chapel's interior in 1972. This was because the convent was going to be torn down. The interior's 1,123 pieces were taken apart, stored, and then put back together inside the gallery as an artwork in 1988.

Canadian and Indigenous Art

The museum's Canadian collection includes art from 18th century New France up to the 1990s. The collection has paintings from before Confederation. It also has abstract paintings and other art made after World War II. The Henry Birks Collection of Canadian Silver is also part of it. Early paintings from before Confederation were among the first items in the Canadian collections. The National Gallery's earliest works came from Canadian artists at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

The Jack Pine by Tom Thomson. The Canadian collection has many works by Thomson.

The museum's Canadian collection has many works by the Group of Seven. The museum also has a large collection of Tom Thomson's works. The museum added The Jack Pine to its collection in 1918. The museum also has the largest collection of works by Alex Colville. Other artists in the collections include William Berczy, Jack Bush, Paul-Émile Borduas, Emily Carr, Robert Field, Vera Frenkel, Theophile Hamel, Joseph Légaré, Cornelius Krieghoff, Fernand Leduc, Alexandra Luke, Ken Lum, James Wilson Morrice, John O'Brien, Antoine Plamondon, William Raphael, Jean-Paul Riopelle, William Ronald, Michael Snow, Lisa Steele, Jeff Wall, Joyce Wieland, Paul Wong, and members of the Regina Five.

To celebrate Canada's 150th anniversary in 2017, the museum spent C$7.4 million on renovations. This was to open the Canadian and Indigenous Art: From Time Immemorial to 1967 gallery. This gallery shows how Canadian art and history have changed over time. It displays Canadian and Indigenous works side by side. These works are shown in a way that explores the connections between these two groups of people.

The Indigenous collection includes art by Indigenous artists from around the world. However, it focuses on works by the Indigenous peoples of Canada. The museum first bought works by First Nations and Metis artists in the early 1900s. But the artists were often not recognized as Indigenous. This is because the Gallery's rules did not include collecting art by Indigenous peoples until the 1980s. The museum bought its first Inuit works in 1956. These were made by artists in Nunavik. The Gallery bought Inuit works at a time when it wasn't actively collecting art from other Indigenous peoples. This was partly because the government wanted to create jobs in the North and show Canada's power there. In 1979, Henry Birks gave a large collection to the NGC. It mostly had Quebecois silver from before Confederation. This gift of over 12,000 objects included about 16 works by Indigenous artists. In 1989 and 1992, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development gave 570 works by Inuit artists.

Artist and Shaman between Two Worlds by Norval Morrisseau on display at the museum.

Many Indigenous artists have their works in the collection. These include Kenojuak Ashevak, Kiawak Ashoona, Qaqaq Ashoona, Carl Beam, Faye HeavyShield, Osuitok Ipeelee, Rita Letendre, Norval Morrisseau, Shelley Niro, David Ruben Piqtoukun, Abraham Anghik Ruben, Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetok, Jeffrey Thomas, John Tiktak, and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun.

Contemporary Art

Maman by Louise Bourgeois, displayed outside the museum.

The museum's contemporary collection has 1,500 works from artists since the 1990s. This collection includes many works from Canadian and Indigenous artists. The first Indigenous Canadian contemporary artwork bought by the National Gallery was in 1987. It was a piece by Anishinaabe artist Carl Beam. In 2017, Bob Rennie gave a contemporary art collection to the National Gallery. This was to celebrate Canada's 150th anniversary. The collection includes 197 paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media pieces. Most of these are from Vancouver-based artists like Geoffrey Farmer, Rodney Graham, Brian Jungen, and Ian Wallace. The Rennie collection also has some international contemporary works, including from Doris Salcedo.

In 1990, the Gallery bought Barnett Newman's Voice of Fire for $1.8 million. This caused a lot of discussion and debate. However, by 2014, its value had grown to about C$40 million. In 1999, the museum bought a huge spider sculpture called Maman by Louise Bourgeois for C$3.2 million. This sculpture was placed in the plaza in front of the Gallery. In 2011, the gallery put Canadian sculptor Joe Fafard's Running Horses next to the Sussex Drive entrance. They also placed American artist Roxy Paine's stainless steel sculpture One Hundred Foot Line at Kìwekì Point behind the gallery. Other contemporary artists whose works are in the National Gallery's collection include David Altmejd, Lee Bul, Janet Cardiff, Bharti Kher, Christian Marclay, Elizabeth McIntosh, Chris Ofili, Paine, Ugo Rondinone, and Joanne Tod.

European, American, and Asian Art

The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West. This painting is part of the museum's collection.

The European, American, and Asian collection area has most of the museum's works by non-Canadian artists. The museum bought its first European artwork in 1907. It was the painting Ignatius Sancho by Thomas Gainsborough. The museum did not start collecting American art until the 1970s.

The museum's collection includes American and European works from the Renaissance period up to the 1900s. Besides Western art, this collection also has 400 works from India, Nepal, and Tibet.

The museum's European collection has grown through purchases and gifts. One such work is La Tour Eiffel by Marc Chagall. The museum bought it in 1956 for C$16,000. In 2018, the museum thought about selling this painting to buy other art. But they stopped those plans because the public did not like the idea. In 2005, the Gallery bought a painting by Italian Renaissance painter Francesco Salviati for $4.5 million. In 2018, the museum bought The Partie Carée by James Tissot. It was from the collection of David R. Graham. This painting was put on display in December 2018. It is the third work by Tissot the museum has bought since 1921. Other works in the collection include The Death of General Wolfe by Anglo-American artist Benjamin West. Other artists in the museum's European collection include Alejo Fernández, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Gustav Klimt, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Henri Matisse, Charles Meynier, Claude Monet, Rembrandt, and Vincent van Gogh.

Library and Archives

The library and archives of the National Gallery of Canada has a large collection of books and documents about Canadian art. The library and archives started with the museum in 1880. It contains documents about Western art from the Late Middle Ages to today. The collection includes 275,000 books, exhibition catalogs, and magazines. It also has 76,000 files and 95,000 microforms (tiny copies of documents). The archives also keep the museum's own historical records.

The library and archives' special collections include over 50,000 auction catalogs. It also has 182,000 slides and 360,000 research photos. The Library and Archives' Exceptional Materials and Notable Subject Collections has many rare books and items about Canadian artists and art historians.

How the Museum is Managed

The Canadian government took over responsibility for the museum in 1913. This happened with the National Gallery of Canada Act. The museum became a Crown corporation on July 1, 1990, when the Museums Act was passed. The Museum Act is the law that guides the museum. It gives power to a board of trustees, who manage the museum. This board reports to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, who is ultimately in charge of the museum. The CEO and director are responsible for running the gallery day-to-day.

The museum works with several groups. These include the Canadian Museums Association, the Ontario Association of Art Galleries, the Canadian Heritage Information Network, and the Virtual Museum of Canada.

Directors of the National Gallery

Here is a list of the directors of the National Gallery of Canada:

Selected Works

Canadian Collection

European and American Collection

Prints and Drawings Collection

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  Giorgio Vasari, Abraham and the Three Angels, c. 16th century

• 

  Caspar David Friedrich, Boy Sleeping on a Grave, c. 1801–1803

• 

  Eugène Delacroix, The Barque of Dante, c. 1820

• 

  Francisco Goya, Holy Week in Spain in Times Past, c. 1825

• 

  Ford Madox Brown, Portrait of Emma Madox Brown, 1853

• 

  John Everett Millais, Portrait of Effie Ruskin, c. 1853

• 

  Odilon Redon, The Raven, 1882

• 

  Mary Cassatt, Woman Bathing, c. 1890–1891

See also

In Spanish: Galería Nacional de Canadá para niños

• Kathleen Fenwick, first gallery curator, from 1929 to 1968
• List of art museums
• List of largest art museums
• List of museums in Ontario
• List of national galleries
• National museums of Canada