The Alberta Art Gallery is an art gallery in the city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
It is located in the city center on Winston Churchill Square. The gallery’s collection includes more than 6 thousand paintings, sculptures, photographs, prints, drawings and installations valued at about 30 million dollars.
History
The Art Gallery of Alberta, originally called the Edmonton Museum of Art, was established in 1924. The first exhibition, which offered the public 24 works borrowed from the National Gallery of Canada, was held in the Palm Room of the Macdonald Hotel. The museum changed its location several times. In 1952, the museum moved to the Richard Second House, a mansion overlooking the North Saskatchewan River Valley built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The museum was officially renamed the “Edmonton Gallery” in 1956 and received its current name in 2005.
Hopes for a new building for the gallery’s growing collection were realized in 1962 when Mrs. A. E. Condell bequeathed money for a new gallery in memory of her son Arthur Blow Condell. Architects Donald Bittorf and James Wenzley were contracted to design the building and the new gallery building was opened to the public in April 1969. The square footage of the building increased when a new wing was added in 1977.
The gallery experienced a new phase of its history in 2005 when, after an international architectural competition, the Los Angeles firm Randall Stout Architects was selected to renovate the gallery building. The new building opened on January 31, 2010, with a total area of almost 8000 m², of which about 3000 m² is protected by a climate control system. The building stands out for its extraordinary exterior design, and in addition to the museum, the building houses a restaurant, a bar, a store and a 150-seat theater.
The most important gift for the permanent collection was received in 1976, when the Poole Foundation donated 100 paintings and sculptures by major Canadian artists and sculptors, including works by Emily Carr, Maurice Cullen, Paul Peel and many others.