National Gallery of Canada
The National Gallery of Canada (French: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city Ottawa, Ontario, is one of Canada's premier art galleries.
The Gallery is now housed in a glass and granite building on Sussex Drive with a notable view of the Canadian Parliament buildings on Parliament Hill. The acclaimed structure was designed by Moshe Safdie and opened in 1988. The Gallery's former director Jean Sutherland Boggs was chosen especially by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to oversee construction of the national gallery and museums.
Marc Mayer was named the museum's director, succeeding Pierre Théberge, on 19 January 2009.
History
View of the National Gallery of Canada from Parliament Hill
The Gallery was first formed in 1880 by Canada's Governor General John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll, and, in 1882, moved into its first home on Parliament Hill in the same building as the Supreme Court. In 1911, the Gallery moved to the Victoria Memorial Museum, now the home of the Canadian Museum of Nature. In 1913, the first National Gallery Act was passed outlining the Gallery's mandate and resources. In 1962, the Gallery moved to the Lorne Building site, a rather nondescript office building on Elgin Street. Adjacent to the British High Commission, the building has since been demolished for a 17 storey office building that is to house the Federal Finance Department. The museum moved into its current building on Sussex Drive in 1988, beside Nepean Point.
In 1985, the newly created Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP), formerly the Stills Photography Division of theNational Film Board of Canada, was affiliated to the National Gallery. The CMCP's mandate, collection and staff moved to its new location in 1992, at 1 Rideau Canal, next to the Château Laurier. In 1998, the CMCP's administration was amalgamated to that of the National Gallery's.
In 2000, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada chose the National Gallery as one of the top 500 buildings produced in Canada during the last millennium.
Collection
The interior of National Gallery of Canada
The Gallery has a large and varied collection of paintings, drawings, sculpture and photographs. Although its focus is on Canadian art, it holds works by many noted American and European artists. It has a strong contemporary art collection with some of Andy Warhol's most famous works. In 1990 the Gallery bought Barnett Newman's Voice of Fire for $1.8 million, igniting a storm of controversy. Since that time its value has appreciated sharply, however. In 2005, the Gallery acquired a painting by Italian Renaissance painter Francesco Salviati for $4.5 million.
In 2005, a sculpture of a giant spider, Louise Bourgeois's Maman, was installed in the plaza in front of the Gallery. In 2011 the gallery installed Canadian sculptor Joe Fafard's Running Horses next to the Sussex Drive entrance, and American artist Roxy Paine's stainless steel sculpture One Hundred Foot Line in Nepean Point behind the gallery.
The Canadian collection, the most comprehensive in Canada, holds works by Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven, Emily Carr, Alex Colville, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Louis-Philippe Hébert.
The Gallery organizes its own exhibits which travel across Canada and beyond, and hosts shows from around the world, often co-sponsored with other national art galleries and museums.
The Gallery's collection has been built up through purchase and donations. Much of the collection was donated, notably the British paintings donated by former Governor General Vincent Massey and that of the Southam family.