toronto is canada’s largest city and the birthplace of
architect frank gehry. gehry was born into a jewish
family living in one of downtown toronto’s immigrant neighbourhoods. gehry would often visit the food market
with his grandmother or spend time building things from
scraps at his grandfather’s hardware store. as a child,
gehry also visited the nearby art gallery of ontario,
which was only a few minutes from his family’s home.
although gehry moved to california in 1947, he would
later return to toronto to re-design the very gallery he
visited as a child.
history
the art gallery of ontario (AGO) was founded in 1900 as
the art museum of toronto by a group of private citizens.
it was later renamed the art gallery of toronto in 1919 and became the art gallery of ontario in 1966. the AGO moved
to its current location in 1911, occupying a building known
as ‘the grange’. since then, the building has also gone
through seven different iterations and additions beginning
in 1918 with a beaux-arts style building designed by
pearson and darling. more renovations were completed
in the 1920’s, 1970’s and the final one in the 1990’s by
barton myers.
despite its most recent renovations and additional space,
the gallery continued to grow and more room was needed.
in 2002, publisher and art collector ken thomson donated
his 2,000 piece art collection and 100 million CAD to the
AGO. the gallery knew they needed to expand in order
to house this siza...
