McMichael Canadian Art Collection gets $25-million in federal funding to help with major renovations

In this season of political turmoil, Canadian nationalism is on the rise. And the McMichael Canadian Art Collection aims to meet the moment. After an announcement of $25-million in federal funding, the gallery north of Toronto – the only one in the country with a purely Canadian bent – is advancing a major renovation and expansion of its facilities.

“It’s hard for anyone to say this isn’t an important project right now,” said Sarah Milroy, the museum’s executive director and chief curator. The McMichael has “a dual role” in exploring Canada’s national identity and its art history, she said; the current American threats to Canada’s sovereignty make these more relevant.

“We have to build from a strong base as Canadians,” she added, “even as we look at art from around the world, and even as we invite everyone in.”

Milroy says the museum plans to renovate and expand its facilities on an estimated budget of $150-million. This week’s announcement from the federal Ministry of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities says the museum will be renovated and expanded to a net-zero-carbon operating standard; the work will enlarge gallery spaces, upgrade art-handling facilities, improve accessibility “and provide additional space for public events and artistic performances.”

The McMichael occupies 40 hectares on the Humber River in the village of Kleinburg – now part of the fast-growing City of Vaughan. Its facility began as the private home of collectors Robert and Signe McMichael, designed in a rustic modernist style by architect Leo Venchiarutti in the 1960s.

Today the building provides a “slightly domestic vibe” that puts visitors at ease, Milroy said; however, its eight-foot ceilings make it impossible to show larger works, and the building has not been substantially renovated since 1983. “We need to address the problems of our physical plant,” Milroy said. “We need to work through a lack of space for education, inadequate exhibition space and physical systems that are end of life.”

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But why invest in it? Milroy argues the McMichael has established close relationships with art museums across the country; it has half a dozen original shows touring Canada. “We’ve made it our business to travel and to be in the buildings of our sister museums,” Milroy said. Recent touring exhibitions include retrospectives of the rising star Rajni Perera and the late Denyse Thomasos as well as Inuk artist Itee Pootoogook. “We’ve really shifted away from the pale and male McMichael of yesteryear,” she said.

Under the direction of Milroy and her predecessor Ian Dejardin, the McMichael has leaned into contemporary art and Indigenous art. It holds more than 100,000 works from Cape Dorset, which can now be viewed online.

For decades, the museum was the battleground for debate about what Canadian art should look like. It began as the private home and collection of the McMichaels, focused tightly on the Group of Seven and artists in their circle. In 1965, they donated the site and art to the Province of Ontario. (Six of the Group of Seven, and the McMichaels, are buried on the grounds.)

The McMichaels continued to live there, however, and Mr. McMichael became the first director of the institution. For decades he publicly disagreed with the gallery’s moves to broaden its mandate and its collection. The Conservative government of Mike Harris passed special legislation in 2000 to enforce the founders’ preferences; this was not repealed until 2011. Dejardin recalled that on his arrival “the institution felt slightly sort of brutalized.”

Today, Milroy says that the museum is bridging the canon of Canadian art with contemporary work that reflects the face of today’s nation. “We need to know who we are as Canadians,” she said. At the McMichael, “that is a distinctive role that we have.”