Toronto’s AGO sets 25 September 2027 opening for C$100m gallery

By Marcus Bennett

The Art Gallery of Ontario will open its C$100 million ($73.4 million) Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery to the public on 25 September 2027. The Toronto institution said its five-storey expansion will display around 400 modern and contemporary works. The AGO first made the 40,000-square-foot project public in April 2022.

Stephan Jost, the AGO’s outgoing director and chief executive, said: “The Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery is more than an expansion project—it is Toronto and Canada announcing its global position.”

In the same statement, he said: “When this gallery opens in September 2027, the world will be made aware of the strength of the AGO collection and the degree to which it has evolved to be truly global.”

The statement makes a global claim for a public gallery project. Its physical case rests on scale and collection growth.

According to the AGO, three architecture firms collaborated on the building:

• Diamond Schmitt, headquartered in Toronto, is known for its revamp of Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver and the forthcoming New Brunswick Museum in Saint John.
• Selldorf Architects, based in New York, is known for recent renovations of the National Gallery in London and the Frick Collection in Manhattan.
• Two Row Architect, headquartered in Ohsweken, Ontario, is known for the Perry Centre for Native American Art at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont.

At the time of the launch in 2022, Jost said: “It’s not a small project.” The AGO says the expansion overlooks downtown Toronto’s Grange Park and increases the museum’s display space by around 30 percent.

What does the new gallery change for visitors?

For visitors, the change is measurable: 5,000 square feet of gallery space with 23-foot-high ceilings and a planned display of around 400 works. The building will give the AGO more room to exhibit modern and contemporary art without requiring its holdings to remain largely unseen.

The need for more space follows a decade of acquisition. The AGO says its modern and contemporary collection grew by around 18,000 pieces over the past decade. Its recent acquisitions and gifts include:

• In 2024, 37 works from the estate of telecoms executive Philip B. Lind, including pieces by Laurie Simmons, Stan Douglas, Jeff Wall, Ai Weiwei, William Kentridge, Rodney Graham and Philip Guston.
• Last year, more than 200 photographs by Peter Hujar.
• Last year, more than 450 works from the late collectors Carol and Morton Rapp, including work by Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Kara Walker, Rachel Whiteread, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Lee Bontecoue and David Hockney.

The AGO also became the focus of a culture war debate after it chose not to acquire a work by the US photo-based artist and activist Nan Goldin.

The AGO says it holds the largest public collection of Henry Moore’s work outside the UK. Two years ago, the city of Toronto declared 13 November Henry Moore Day to mark the 50th anniversary of the gallery’s Henry Moore Sculpture Centre.

The project was sparked by a C$35 million ($25.7 million) lead gift from Dani Reiss, an art collector, the chairman and chief executive of Canada Goose and a member of the Order of Canada. The AGO says the Reiss Gallery project is now fully funded through contributions from a community of supporters and the governments of Ontario and Canada.

Gregor Robertson, the minister of housing and infrastructure, said: “The federal government is proud to support this sustainable, state-of-the-art gallery that will host some of the world’s best modern and contemporary art for generations to come.”

The test for Toronto is not the claim of global status. It is whether 40,000 square feet can sustain public display for a collection that has grown by around 18,000 modern and contemporary pieces in a decade. The first answer arrives on 25 September 2027.