Winnipeg Art Gallery

The Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) is a public art museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Founded in 1912 as the Winnipeg Museum of Fine Arts, it is Canada's oldest public art gallery and the sixth largest museum in the country. The institution holds a permanent collection of over 24,000 works spanning Canadian, Indigenous Canadian, and international art, with particular distinction as the home of the world's largest public collection of Inuit art. Its building complex comprises a main structure of 11,000 square metres (120,000 sq ft) and the adjacent 3,700-square-metre (40,000 sq ft) Qaumajuq building, located in the heart of Winnipeg near the Manitoba Legislative Building and the University of Winnipeg.

The gallery traces its origins to 1912, when the Winnipeg Development and Industrial Bureau opened the Winnipeg Museum of Fine Arts to the public on 16 December 1912. The inaugural exhibition featured 275 works from the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. In 1913, the bureau established the Winnipeg School of Arts in the same building, with the museum and school operating as separate departments. The institution gained independence from the bureau in April 1923, when the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba incorporated it as the Winnipeg Gallery and School of Art.

Financial difficulties forced the suspension of most museum operations in 1926. That August, the Winnipeg Art Gallery Association formed to assist the museum, and the gallery reopened on 22 April 1932 in the western wing of the Civic Auditorium (now the Manitoba Archives Building). In June 1950, the Winnipeg Gallery and School of Art was formally dissolved; the School of Art became part of the University of Manitoba, while the collection was loaned indefinitely to the Winnipeg Art Gallery Association.

On 6 May 1963, the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba formally incorporated the Winnipeg Art Gallery Association as the Winnipeg Art Gallery. The museum moved to its present location in September 1971, into a purpose-built building designed by Gustavo da Roza. In 2018, construction began on the Qaumajuq Inuit Art Centre, designed by Michael Maltzan and curated by four Inuit curators: Jade Nasogaluak Carpenter, Krista Ulujuk Zawadski, Asinnajaq, and Heather Igloliorte. Qaumajuq opened in 2021.

The WAG's collection encompasses nearly 24,000 works ranging from sixteenth-century Flemish tapestries to twenty-first-century video art. The holdings are organized across several core areas. Canadian and international art forms the broad foundation, with particular strength in works on paper: approximately 5,000 drawings and over 7,000 prints. The photography and video collection, begun in the 1980s, now numbers 1,500 works.

The American and European art holdings include a significant 1970 donation from relatives of Standish Vereker, 7th Viscount Gort, comprising one of western Canada's finest collections of Flemish and German Renaissance art, with works by the Master of the Saint Gudule View, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Bartholomäus Bruyn the Younger. The collection also features British artists from John Everett Millais to Barbara Hepworth, nineteenth- and twentieth-century French works by artists including Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Marc Chagall, and Yves Klein, and an extensive holding of German Expressionism by Walter Gramatté, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Egon Schiele, and Erich Heckel. American twentieth-century works include pieces by Jules Olitski, Alexander Archipenko, Dennis Oppenheim, and Sol LeWitt.

The decorative arts collection, initiated in the 1950s, contains over 4,000 ceramics, glass, metal, and textile objects from the seventeenth to twenty-first centuries, with notable Art Nouveau and Art Deco glass by Émile Gallé, Tiffany, Steuben, and Lalique, and a significant silver collection focusing on British and Canadian domestic and ecclesiastical pieces.

The Inuit art collection, the world's largest publicly accessible holding of its kind, was substantially augmented in 2015 through an agreement with the Government of Nunavut's Department of Culture and Heritage to loan approximately 7,400 works from the Nunavut art collection, spanning from the 1870s to the present.

The Inuit art collection stands as the WAG's signature holding, featuring thousands of sculptures, prints, drawings, artifacts, and textiles by artists including Kenojuak Ashevak, Osuitok Ipeelee, Jesse Oonark, Kananginak Pootoogook, Pauta Saila, and Irene Avaalaaqiaq Tiktaalaaq. Contemporary Inuit drawings by Shuvani Ashoona, Tim Pitsiulak, Ningiukulu Teevee, and Annie Pootoogook are also represented.

The works on paper collection includes significant nineteenth-century documentation of Manitoba life through watercolors and ink drawings by Peter Rindisabacher, William Hind, and Frances Hopkins, alongside Canadian artists such as Ozias Leduc, Carl Schaefer, Ernst Lindner, and David Blackwood. Contemporary paper works include collages by Paul Butler and Simon Hughes and watercolors by Marcel Dzama.

The photography collection holds works by international figures including André Kertész, Alexander Rodchenko, Edward Steichen, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Irving Penn, Harold Edgerton, and Diane Arbus, as well as contemporary Canadian and American photographers such as Ken Lum, Lynne Cohen, Suzy Lake, Joan Jonas, Ian Wallace, and Edward Burtynsky. Manitoba photographers including David McMillan, John Paskievich, Diana Thorneycroft, Larry Glawson, William Eakin, and Sarah Anne Johnson are also represented.

The Clara Lander Library supports research with over 24,000 books, more than 9,000 artist biographical files, and subscriptions to hundreds of art journals and newsletters.

The WAG occupies a site two blocks from the Manitoba Legislative Building and approximately the same distance from the University of Winnipeg. The main building, opened in September 1971, was designed by Gustavo da Roza and provides 11,000 square metres (120,000 sq ft) of indoor space.

The Qaumajuq Inuit Art Centre, opened in 2021, was designed by Michael Maltzan. The modern building features a curved facade of white granite evoking arctic landscapes. Its central gallery, Qilak (Inuktitut for "sky"), offers 800 square metres of exhibition space flooded with natural light. Qaumajuq also contains the Visible Vault, a glass vitrine displaying over 5,000 Inuit sculptures across multiple levels. The addition provides 3,700 square metres (40,000 sq ft) of space.

The Winnipeg Art Gallery is located in central Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and operates as a public institution. Its exhibitions have travelled internationally to New York, Caracas, Bogotá, Barcelona, Tokyo, Thessaloniki, and Verona. The museum maintains a website at https://www.wag.ca/.