“Very few buildings [were] built specifically to be art galleries in Canada. The National Gallery of Canada, for example, was housed in the ‘temporary’ quarters assigned to it in 1910, in a wing of the Victoria Memorial Museum. The building also housed the National Museum and the Geological Survey. Elsewhere in Ontario, London and Windsor had spaces designated for art exhibitions in their public libraries and in Oshawa art as displayed in the YWCA. While Montreal and Quebec City had ‘purpose-built’ galleries, farther east, in Fredericton, art was shown in a Quonset hut left over from WWII, Saint John had a gallery in the New Brunswick Museum and in Halifax there was an ‘art room’ in the public library and a gallery in the arts and administration building of Dalhousie University. To the west, the Winnipeg Art Gallery was housed in the Civic Auditorium Building and the Saskatoon Art Centre in the basement of  the King George Hotel; Calgary and Victoria showed art in converted houses, and in Edmonton art was shown in the Edmonton Motor Building. It would not be until the 1960s and ’70s that most Canadian cities would build galleries with the big white walls…”

~ Robert McKaskell, ‘1953, Fifty Years Later’, from 1953  (Catalogue of an exhibition by Painters Eleven, held at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, 2003/04)

 The National Gallery of Canada