The Ondaatje Gallery features Canadian artworks – historic and contemporary – from The Ondaatje Collection of Canadian Art which is part of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia’s Permanent Collection.
Comprised of works donated from Sir Christopher Ondaatje’s personal collection, as well as works whose purchase was made possible with his support alongside that of the Art Sales and Rental Society (Teichert Gallery) and the former Gallery Volunteer Committee, the Ondaatje Collection is a testament to the partnership between art galleries and the donors who help make their work possible.
This eclectic collection brings together works by Canadian artists from the 18th century to the 1980s, spanning abstraction and realism, landscapes and figures, and Eastern and Western Canadian perspectives.
An ongoing exhibition of rotating pieces from The Ondaatje Collection can be found in The Ondaatje Gallery, and currently features work by many renowned artists such as William Kurelek, an artist and writer whose work drew on his prairie childhood and Ukrainian heritage to illustrate Canadian life, and Paul-Émile Borduas, an artist known for his impact on the development of the arts in Canada through his abstract artwork and as leader of the avant-garde Automatiste movement.
The Ondaatje Collection also includes works by many other Canadian national artists including Tom Forrestall, Alex Colville, Jean Paul Lemieux, William Kurelek, Louise Scott, A.Y. Jackson and others. Works from the collection are rotated periodically in the Gallery.
What truly binds this collection is its reflection of the sheer breadth of Canadian art, driven by the generous spirit of a collector sharing his passion with all AGNS visitors.
“These were the paintings that we collected and loved the most while we were growing up in Canada during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. They are a mosaic of the country’s growth, the artists’ impressions at that time, and our own emotional lives. This is the first time all these works of art have been displayed in the same room – as part of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and part of our own permanent National heritage.” – Sir Christopher Ondaatje
Image: Sir Christopher Ondaatje courtesy of the Ondaatje Family
Featured Image: John Ward, The Dock (detail), 1978, acrylic on canvas, 54.0 x 83.5 cm, Gift of Christopher Ondaatje, Toronto, Ontario, 1994
