Art Gallery of Ontario

Art Gallery of Ontario, redesigned by Frank Gehry and free on Wednesday evenings

Website https://ago.ca

The Art Gallery of Ontario — the AGO — has a permanent collection of roughly 100,000 works, with particular strengths in Canadian art (including the Group of Seven), Indigenous art, and European paintings from Rubens through Picasso. The collection of works by Henry Moore is one of the largest in the world; Moore donated the pieces himself after visiting the city.

The 2008 Frank Gehry redesign doubled the gallery's size. Gehry, who grew up in the neighbourhood and has deep personal connections to the building, created a spiralling titanium staircase that wraps through the interior and a long curved wooden structure on the Dundas Street facade that softens what was an austere building. The Walker Court, the original atrium at the heart of the 1918 building, was preserved and is one of the most pleasant spaces in the city.

Admission is free on Wednesday evenings between 6pm and 9pm — a genuine deal for one of North America's better art museums.

things to do museum art
A story
Frank Gehry grew up in Toronto, played hockey in the streets behind the Art Gallery of Ontario as a child, and attended the original building's opening ceremonies. When he was commissioned to design the 2008 expansion, he donated his design fees back to the museum. The result — a spiralling titanium-and-glass staircase inside and a wave of Douglas fir and glass stretching along Dundas Street outside — is genuinely beautiful, and more restrained than his usual work.