Toronto Art Gallery of Ontario
The ART Gallery of Ontario or AGO is a world-renowned arts and culture museum featuring more than 95,000 selected works. The Permanent Collection is vast, with many celebrated Canadian artists such as the Group of Seven and an extensive Indigenous Collection. Also, it includes impressive European masterpieces as well as varied Modern and Contemporary Collections. Travel the globe to the African At Gallery or step back in time to the Renaissance and Baroque era in the European Collection. The museum exhibits a wide range of works that includes prints, drawings, sculpture, photography, Library, and Archives. The AGO is also host to many exciting traveling exhibits.
The AGO Mission states: ” We bring people together with art to see, experience, and understand the world in new ways by presenting great ART, facilitating LEARNING, and engaging our AUDIENCE.”
Founded in 1900, the AGO was initially named the Art Gallery of Toronto. It was designated a Provincial museum and the main building officially opened to the public in 1918 as the Art Gallery of Ontario. The 45,000 square feet of the museum is also home to a theatre, lecture hall, research centre, an artist-in-residence office and studio, event facilities, dining facilities, a workshop, and a gift shop.
The Permanent Collection starts at home with the Canadian Collection. With an emphasis on the art of Toronto and Ontario, it is an outstanding Collection and also houses works from throughout Canada. The AGO has a premier collection from the Group of Seven, Tom Thomson, and their contemporaries. The Canadian Collection also exhibits Canadian Modernism, Abstraction, Early Quebec art, watercolors, and sculptures from all periods.
Artist Tom Thomson generously donated a portion of his art collection to the AGO. Consisting of over 2,000 primarily Canadian and European works of art, they are on display in the Thomson Collections’ twenty-three viewing halls. Some of the significant contributions include over three hundred works by the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, 100 works by David Milne Cornelius Krieghoff, and the European masterwork The Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens. His donation also included an extraordinary collection of more than one hundred mostly British model ships, dating back to the 17th century.
The European Collection contains works of art dating back from 1000 C.E. and spans up to 1900 C.E. It represents works from the Middle Ages to the Italian Renaissance and beyond. Three pillars cover The OLD Master Collection with Dutch paintings from the 1600s, Italian sculpture and paintings from the 1600s, and French Impressionist paintings from the 1800s. The Tom Thomson Collection provides an exceptional display of small-scale sculpture with French Ivory works created between 1200 to 1400s C.E. Another of Thomson’s donations is the world’s most extensive Collection of Netherland Devotional Boxwood Carvings from 1500. Some highlighted works are the French sculpture Archangel Michael c. 1290, Vetheuil en ete by Claude Monet c. 1879, and Portrait of a Lady with Lap Dog by Rembrandt van Rijn c. 1665.
The Indigenous Collection is some of the oldest art in the world, and the AGO’s goal was to establish a collection from The First Nations, Inuit, and Metis, the First Peoples of North America. Indigenous art is created from living cultures making it more fluid and dynamic and spans several centuries. The Collection holds more than 5,000 items with over 2,500 sculptures, 700 drawings, and 1,300 prints. The Ago has acquired an exceptional collection of contemporary Inuit art created in Canada since 1948. In 2002 an anonymous donor gifted the museum with over 1,000 Torres Strait Islander and Australian Aboriginal works of art. A collection of over 300 boomerangs representing different regions highlight the exhibit.
The Modern Collection houses art from 1900 to 1960, with most works coming from Europe and America. The museum obtained pieces from several essential artists in Europe before and during World War I, such as Gino Severini, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Claude Monet, and Pablo Picasso. A group of surrealist paintings by Yves Tanguy, Joan Miro, and Pablo Picasso are a highlight of interwar works. The museum owns and displays many Abstract Expressionism pieces by Franz Kline, David Smith, Arshile Gorky, and Hans Hofman. Renowned British artist Henry Moore donated much of his work to the AGO. In 1974 the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre opened. His sculpture Two Large Forms sits on display in Grange Park on the museum grounds.
The Gallery is home to an impressive Photography Collection with over 70,000 works spanning from 1840 to the present. The museum exhibits the history of photography and its importance historically, socially, and artistically. The AGO has a considerable grouping of photographic albums which create visual key events or keepsakes. One such Collection is a group of 495 World War I photo albums that tell the story of soldiers, survivors, and nurses who made them.
The diverse Collections continue with an African Collection, a Contemporary Collection, and a Prints and Drawings Collection. The Edward P. Taylor Library and Archives full of over 380,000 books, including some rare volumes and artists’ books from the present and some that date back to the 17th century. Some of the book collections can be accessed in the Library’s online catalogue.
The Art Gallery of Ontario promises to be a stimulating and enriching experience with a wide-ranging array of Collections. The AGO Bistro offers guests an extraordinary dining experience with delicious locally sourced ingredients. For a quick lunch or snack, visit cafe AGO. It is easily accessible within walking distance of several other downtown Toronto attractions, including Yonge-Dundas Square, the Eaton Centre, and Chinatown. The St. Patrick subway stop is only a few blocks from the museum. Both the Dundas and Spadina streetcars stop in front of the AGO. Check out the shopAGO gift store for a wide range of giftware, prints, books, and souvenirs.
Check out the Toronto Canada’s Wonderland Amusement Park which is in Toronto ON too.
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