Toronto’s cultural rebirth – museums for the future– 21st-century museum expansion, Canadian style
Canadian Renaissance architectural project of recent years
MúzeumCafé 20.
The city of Toronto is working hard to position itself on the cultural map of the world, as is shown by the construction fever of the past decade. Walking in its centre you are greeted by large-scale, hyper-modern wonders with extravagant façades or strictly functional buildings mainly constructed from glass and metal, all a product of the Canadian Renaissance architectural project of recent years. The black and white, spotted-box-like extension of the Ontario College of Art and Design, standing on legs resembling coloured pencils, was produced by Will Alsop, creating in the process an inspiring environment for future designers. The Canadian Opera Company’s new home is the work of Jack Diamond, while Bruce Kubawara has designed a new centre for the Toronto International Film Festival. Alongside numerous small museums, dance and music theatres, the works of two undoubted start architects of our times, Frank O. Gehry and Daniel Libeskind, are decisive elements of the enriched city – namely, buildings housing collections featuring among the very best in North America, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum. In recent years both have been considerably transformed, in each case an edifice more than 100 years old receiving a new look. The expansion of the collections, fundamental changes in exhibition policy at the start of the 21st century, as well as the habits and demands of visitors and the need to establish a more comfortable atmosphere all justified the reconfiguration and rethinking of their spaces. The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) is the most important showcase of Canadian and European fine and applied arts. The institution was established as the Art Museum of Toronto in 1900 on the eastern side of the city centre with the involvement of enthusiastic Toronto artists, collectors and wealthy citizens, and by means of a generous gift it moved to its present location, a Georgian building known as The Grange, in 1910. The first permanent exhibition, comprising both originals and prints of works by European and Canadian painters, and – as was the custom at the time – plaster copies of antique sculpture, opened in the single-storey villa in 1913, but from the start it was clear that in time the building would have to expand. Although the First World War slowed down construction to a certain extent, by the spring of 1918 there was a new, neo-Classical wing attached to the old building which was dedicated to temporary exhibitions of old masters and to the display of group exhibitions of contemporary artists. Due to lavish private gifts and the purchases of curators the collection grew quickly, necessitating continuous expansion. Thus during the 20th century several additional structures increased the museum’s space, but without any overall concept the additions resulted in a disorganised and chaotic arrangement. Between 1926 and 1933, in line with the favoured European practice, a rearrangement was established involving picture galleries surrounding a large, central ‘hall of sculpture’. The institution retained that form right up to the 1970s and a new wave of construction when the building, which needed three new floors, was again significantly altered. The wings were demolished and new spaces were created to house offices, store rooms, a restaurant and exhibition rooms. The first stage was completed in 1974 and its first floor was given over to large statues, models and drawings which the sculptor Henry Moore had generously donated to the museum. Due to the subsequent setting up of the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre the AGO became one of the most outstanding international focuses of 20th-century sculpture. The gallery on the building’s north-eastern side was established with the participation of Moore himself, thus the arrangement of the interior space, the combination of overhead and side lighting and the restrained colours of the walls and flooring entirely reflect the artist’s conceptions. The next stage resulted in expansion of storage space by fifty per cent, a new floor devoted to contemporary Inuit culture, a new graphics section and service areas including a library, offices, laboratories and workshops for restorers. By 1992 the building was equipped to cope with every modern task, but the continuous alterations without any overall conception had resulted in higgledy-piggledy, labyrinth-like spaces. A private donation in the early 2000s necessitated rethinking the museum’s 21st-century mission, the more rational arrangement of its spaces and the unavoidable reorganisation. The wealthy businessman, newspaper proprietor and art collector Kenneth Thompson (1923-2006) indicated his intention to donate his collection spanning 2000 years to the city of his birth. The more than 1000 works included items ranging from Canada’s early history to contemporary art, from medieval ivory carvings, through classical European masters to impressionists. This rich collection forced the AGO directors to consider the shortcomings of the building and finally to commission one of the leading figures of contemporary architecture, Frank O. Gehry, to draw up, taking into account the existing limitations.