Museums and Galleries

With an arresting modern design, the much-anticipated Inuit Art Centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery opens in 2020. The $65 million, 40,000-square-foot building showcases Canada’s four Arctic regions through fine art in carvings, paintings and stone-cut print, making Winnipeg the official hub for Inuit culture and indigenous art in the country.

Newfoundland is known for its colorful and charming linguistic expressions. Learn what “between the jigs and reels” means and other classics in the local lingo at a new exhibit called “A Job to Say” at The Rooms in St. John’s. The exhibit, popular with both residents and “Come From Aways” (visitors), is ongoing.

A new and innovative mobile art gallery surfaced in Yellowknife in summer 2019. It’s a bright cargo trailer housing a gallery that roams from community to community in Canada’s remote North. The idea is to “cross-pollinate ideas” and give local artists and craftspeople a venue to show their work. Check the website for locations.

The much-anticipated new Winnipeg Gallery opened at the Manitoba Museum in November 2019. The museum’s first permanent exhibit since 2003 tells the story of Winnipeg from founding to today. On display: 100 never-shown-before artifacts, 150 years of immigration history, indigenous culture and treasures like a stained-glass Winnipeg sign, archived since the 1960s.

The Royal Alberta Museum moved to a new location in Edmonton in 2018, doubling its size. The new “I Am From Here” exhibit opening in March 2020 in the Human History Hall focuses on Alberta’s early Black pioneers, who settled in the newly formed province more than 100 years ago, and their descendants.