The Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) is an art museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Its permanent collection includes over 24,000 works from Canadian, Indigenous Canadian, and international artists. The museum also holds the world’s most extensive collection of Inuit art. In addition to exhibits for its collection, the museum has organized and hosted several traveling art exhibitions. Its building complex consists of a main building that includes 11,000 square meters (120,000 sq ft) of indoor space and the adjacent 3,700-square-metre (40,000 sq ft) Qaumajuq building.
The present institution was formally incorporated in 1963. However, it traces its origins to the Winnipeg Museum of Fine Arts, an art museum opened to the public in 1912 by the Winnipeg Development and Industrial Bureau. The bureau opened the Winnipeg School of Arts in the following year. It operated the art museum and art school until 1923 when the two entities were incorporated as the Winnipeg Gallery and School of Arts. In 1926, the Winnipeg Art Gallery Association was formed to assist the institution in operating its museum component. The Winnipeg Gallery and School of Art were dissolved in 1950, although its collection was loaned indefinitely to the Winnipeg Art Gallery Association, which continued to exhibit it.
In 1963, the Winnipeg Art Gallery Association was formally incorporated as the Winnipeg Art Gallery by the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba. The museum moved to its present location in September 1971, with the opening of a purpose-built building designed by Gustavo da Roza. In 2021, the museum opened a Michael Maltzan-designed Qaumajuq building to house the museum’s Inuit art collection.
Collection
Canadian Art
The museum’s Canadian collection includes works from Canadian artists dating back to the 1820s to the present day. The museum’s permanent collection consists of 200 works by Canadian artists from 1820 to 1910. Work by Canadian artists before the 20th century in the museum’s collection include those created by Maurice Cullen, Mary Riter Hamilton, John A. Hammond, Robert Harris, Otto Reinhold Jacobi, Paul Kane, Cornelius Krieghoff, James Wilson Morrice, Lucius Richard O’Brien, William Raphael, George Agnew Reid, Peter Rindisbacher, Frederick Arthur Verner, and Homer Watson. Bed Bug Exterminator Winnipeg
Inuit Art
The Winnipeg Art Gallery’s permanent collection also includes the world’s largest collection of Inuit art, numbering over 13,000 works in March 2019. Inuit carvings make up nearly two-thirds of the museum’s Inuit collection, including 7,500 antler, bone, ivory, stone carvings, and dozens of hand-sewn wall hangings. Other works in the collection include 3,000 prints and drawings from Inuit artists.
Address: 300 Memorial Blvd, Winnipeg, MB
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