Gehry's new museum design for Toronto - Front Page

On Jan. 28, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto unveiled architect Frank Gehry's plan for an extensive expansion of the museum. The design calls for a block-long, 70-foot-high glass-and-titanium canopy to be added to the facade of the museum's existing building; a new four-story wing, also clad in glass and titanium, devoted to contemporary art; and a large sculpture gallery, the interior of which will be visible to passersby (among its other treasures, the AGO boasts an impressive collection of work by Henry Moore). The additions will increase the AGO's exhibition area by 40 percent, bringing the museum's total gallery space to 123,500 square feet. Other noteworthy changes include a relocated main entrance and a spiraling wood staircase leading from the second floor of the existing building across a courtyard to the top of the new contemporary-art wing.

A main impetus behind the expansion was the donation of 2,000 works by collector Kenneth Thomson. Thomson's gift includes European works ranging from the medieval period to the 19th century, as well as key examples of Canadian art. Among the highlights is Peter Paul Rubens's The Massacre of the Innocents, a recently discovered large-scale painting that Thomson purchased at auction in 2002 for $76.7 million [see "Front Page," Sept. '02; "Artworld," Oct. '02]. The 80-year-old Thomson, whose media and technology empire made him the wealthiest man in Canada, has also given the museum $50 million toward the $198-million expansion.

The project is something of a homecoming for the 74-year-old, Los Angeles-based Gehry, who was born and raised in Toronto, not far from the AGO, and credits his interest in art to early visits to the museum. The expansion will be his first major project in Canada. While the initial response to the new AGO has been favorable, some in Toronto have expressed disappointment that Gehry's design does not suggest a building as dramatic and publicity-generating as his Guggenheim Bilbao. In a Jan. 28 interview with the New York Times, the architect observed that the nature of the project precludes a Bilbao-like impact. "It's a little bit much to assume," he said, "that I will remodel a building that has already been remodeled before and that will change Toronto."

Gehry's redesigned AGO will be joining two other striking, soon-to-be-completed buildings on the Toronto skyline, Will Alsop's Ontario College of Art and Design and Daniel Libeskind's addition to the natural-history-oriented Royal Ontario Museum. Construction of the AGO addition is slated to begin next spring and finish in the fall of 2007.

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