page_title: Winnipeg Art Gallery
section_title: Main building
hierarchical_section_title: Winnipeg Art Gallery / Architecture / Main building
caption_attribution_description: Winnipeg, Manitoba
context_page_description: The Winnipeg Art Gallery is an art museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Its permanent collection includes over 24,000 works from Canadian, and indigenous Canadians, and international artists. The museum also holds the world's largest collection of Inuit art. In addition to exhibits for its collection, the museum has organized and hosted a number of travelling arts exhibitions. Its building complex consists of a main building that includes 11,000 square metres of indoor space and the adjacent 3,700-square-metre Inuit Art Centre.
  The present institution was formally incorporated in 1963, although it traces its origins to the Winnipeg Museum of Fine Arts, an art museum opened to the public in 1912 by the Winnipeg Development and Industrial Bureau. The bureau opened the Winnipeg School of Arts in the following year, and operated the art museum, and art school until 1923, when the two entities were incorporated as the Winnipeg Gallery and School of Arts. In 1926, the Winnipeg Art Gallery Association was formed to assist the institution in operating its museum component.
context_section_description: The main building for the Winnipeg Art Gallery was opened in September 1971, and was designed by Gustavo da Roza in a late-modernist style. During the design and construction process, da Roza partnered with Number Ten Architects, who provided architectural drafting and project management.
  The building's exterior was designed as an iceberg-shaped "triangular mass," with an austere low silhouette, and almost no windows throughout its exterior. The building's exterior walls are sloped to reflect sunlight, and uses "aggressive" geometric angles. A wedge that protrudes from the "main mass" forms the entrance to the main building. Most of the building was built from poured-in-place, reinforced concrete and clad in Tyndall stone. According to da Roza, the use of Tyndall stone for the load bearing wall was selected to help affirm the "character of [the] northern prairie environment." Tyndall stone is also used extensively for the walls and floor of the interior, and the lounges in the building's second floor.
  The interior of the gallery was designed to help maintain and preserve works exhibited in the building, and includes mechanical systems that maintain the atmosphere of the building at an appropriate temperature and humidity for the works. As a result of the building's angular shape, nearly every room in the building has a different shape from the other rooms in the building. The interior of the building features 2,400 square metres (26,000 sq ft) of exhibition space. Most of the building's viewing galleries are located on the third floor, which also features a skylight set from the building's rooftop garden; whereas the mezzanine level is dedicated to smaller exhibition spaces, the museum's library, and offices.
  The ground level, known as Ferdinand Eckhardt Hall, is a large space sheathed in saw-cut Tyndall stone, and houses the museum's gift shop and art rental store, conservation lab, the main lobby, and a 320-seat auditorium complete this level.  The museum's restaurant facilities and access to the rooftop garden are located on the building's fourth floor, while its storage for its collections are located in the building's basement. The total indoor area of the building is 11,000 square metres (120,000 sq ft).
caption: The main building of the museum complex features a rooftop garden
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