Location: Ottawa, Canada
Architect: Moshe Safdie
Year: 1988
The National Gallery of Canada (French: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada’s national art museum. The museum building occupies 46,621 square metres (501,820 sq ft), with 12,400 square metres (133,000 sq ft) of space used to display art. It is one of the largest art museums in North America by exhibition space.
The institution was founded in 1880 in the Second Supreme Court of Canada building and moved to the Victoria Memorial Museum building in 1911. In 1913, the Government of Canada passed the National Gallery Act, formally outlining the institution’s mandate as a national art museum. The museum relocated to the Lorne Building in 1960.
In 1988, the museum moved to a new purpose-built building. The National Gallery of Canada is housed in a glass and granite building on Sussex Drive, with a remarkable view of the Canadian Parliament buildings on Parliament Hill. The building was designed by Israeli architect Moshe Safdie and opened in 1988.
The museum’s permanent collection includes more than 93,000 works by European, American and Asian, Canadian and Indigenous artists. In addition to exhibiting works from its permanent collection, the museum also organises and hosts a number of travelling exhibitions.
