Art Gallery of Alberta

The Art Gallery of Alberta

The Art Gallery of Alberta (formerly Edmonton Art Gallery ; AGA for short) is a public art gallery in Edmonton , Alberta , Canada . The gallery's collection includes over 6,000 historical and modern works of art, including paintings, sculptures, installations and photographs by Canadian and international artists. In addition to the permanent collection, the Art Gallery presents concept exhibitions and public information events.

Originally the gallery was housed in a brutalist building built by Don Bittorf in 1968 . After the building was demolished, a new, modern building was designed and built by Randall Stout for CAN $ 88 million and reopened in 2010. In the new building, the exhibition and usable area for a restaurant and a theater with 150 seats has been doubled to 7,900 m ² . In response to the redesign of the Art Gallery of Alberta there was a significant increase in memberships and within the first six weeks 30,000 visitors attended the gallery's inaugural exhibition. The current director of the gallery is Gilles Hébert, and Catherine Crowston is the curator .

history

The Art Gallery of Alberta was founded in 1924 under the name "The Edmonton Museum of Arts". The first exhibition took place in the same year in the Palm Room of the Hotel MacDonald in Edmonton. As a result, the museum was housed in four locations in Edmonton, in addition to the hotel's Palm Room, the old Edmonton Public Library, the fourth floor of the Civic Block and the Edmonton Motors building, before moving to the historic Secord House in 1952. In 1956 the museum was renamed "The Edmonton Art Gallery".

Renovation work on the Art Gallery of Alberta in May 2009

Renovation work on the Art Gallery of Alberta in June 2009

Soon Secord House was too small for the museum's ever-growing collection. In 1961, the museum was looking for a way to build its own building, for which the City of Edmonton made a 2,400 m ² site on Sir Winston Churchill Square available. In 1969 the building erected by Don Bittorf opened as the Arthur Blow Condell Memorial Building , colloquially known as The Bittorf Building .

The new building allowed the museum to hold larger exhibitions with higher exhibition standards. In the early 1990s, however, the brutalist building's design was considered outdated and should be replaced by a modern one. In 2005 a competition for the redesign was announced, in which the design of the architect Randall Stout from Los Angeles was selected. The gallery was renamed the Art Gallery of Alberta and a large part of the old Bittorf building was torn down for the new facility, but significant parts were taken over into the concept. Local architects and engineering firms supported Randall Stout's team from Los Angeles and San Francisco.

On January 31st and February 1st, 2010 the gallery was reopened with a two-day opening ceremony. The opening exhibitions on these days were Figures in Motion by the French impressionist Edgar Degas with 40 bronze statues of ballet dancers and horses as well as numerous drawings and paintings, The Disasters of War and Los Caprichos by the Spaniard Francisco Goya and Image Maker with pictures by the world-famous Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh . The gallery also showed the picture series Building Art: Photographs of the Building of the AGA, 2008-2010 by Edward Burtynsky , who photographed the new building of the Art Gallery of Alberta, as well as the installations Storm Room and The Murder of Crows by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller .