Art Gallery of Ontario

The AGO holds around one hundred and twenty thousand works, with the strongest public collection of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson anywhere, plus a large Henry Moore holding the sculptor himself helped install in 1974, and a growing Indigenous and Canadian collection. Frank Gehry, who grew up a few streets away and said his grandmother took him here, designed the 2008 transformation: a curved Douglas fir and glass gallery running the length of the Dundas Street front, and a spiralling wooden staircase that climbs through the roof. Anyone under twenty-five gets in free, which is unusual for a museum of this size.

History

The museum was founded in 1900 as the Art Museum of Toronto by a group of citizens and members of the Toronto Society of Arts, and incorporated by law in 1903; Harriet Boulton Smith left it her Georgian manor of 1817, The Grange, which passed to the museum in 1911 and opened as the gallery in June 1913. Its first new galleries opened in 1918, it became the Art Gallery of Toronto in 1919, and in 1966 it took its present name (Wikipedia, Art Gallery of Ontario).

What you'll find

• The Group of Seven - the largest public holding of the Canadian landscape painters.
• The Gehry facade - a curved Douglas fir and glass gallery along Dundas.
• The spiral staircase - a wooden stair climbing through the roof.
• The Henry Moore centre - a large sculpture collection installed with the artist.

When to go

Year-round; the gallery closes Mondays and stays open late on Wednesdays. Major touring exhibitions carry separate timed tickets and sell out. Free entry for visitors under twenty-five.

Practical notes

Special exhibitions cost extra on top of general admission. The collection is large and a single visit covers a fraction. Wednesday evenings and weekends are busy.

Nearby

Casa Loma lies north; the Distillery District is southeast.

Key facts