Vancouver Art Gallery Opens First Dedicated Collection Floor

Vancouver Art Gallery Opens First Dedicated Collection Floor

Vancouver Art Gallery Opens First Dedicated Collection Floor

A New Chapter for the Collection: Vancouver Art Gallery Opens First Dedicated Collection Floor in More Than Two Decades. Featuring 200 Plus Works, Highlights from the Collection Traces the Evolving History of the Gallery’s Permanent Collection

MARCH, 2026, VANCOUVER, BC // Traditional Coast Salish Lands including the Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm), Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw) and Tsleil-Waututh (səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ) Nations.

The Vancouver Art Gallery presents Highlights from the Collection, a major exhibition drawn entirely from its permanent holdings of more than 13,000 artworks. This presentation marks the opening of a newly dedicated floor for the collection.

Featuring more than 200 works by over 100 artists, the exhibition traces the evolving history of the collection through the environments in which art has lived, circulated and gathered meaning. With the selection rotating regularly to preserve light-sensitive works, the exhibition will continually refresh, offering visitors differing perspectives on the collection throughout its run.

“Highlights from the Collection reflects our ongoing commitment to making the Gallery’s collection more accessible while foregrounding the stories and connections that continue to resonate today,” says Eva Respini, Interim Co-CEO & Curator at Large at the Vancouver Art Gallery. “As the cultural memory keeper of the province, the collection carries the legacies, voices and creative expressions that continue to shape our collective imagination. We are excited to invite visitors from near and far to rediscover beloved works, encounter new perspectives and experience the living histories held within our walls.”

Highlights from the Collection takes visitors on a tour through the Vancouver Art Gallery’s collection, from historic Indigenous art to contemporary practices today. Significant works—including The Atom (c. 1938) by Beatrice Lennie, Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe (1967) and Geoffrey Farmer’s The Surgeon and the Photographer (2009)—are joined by recent acquisitions such as Elizabeth McIntosh’s striking painting Work Out (2023), Ellen Pau’s first super-8 film Glove (1984) and photographs by Shikanosuke Yagaki from the 1930s. The selection includes over 40 of the Gallery’s recent acquisitions, spanning sculpture, prints, video installations and site-specific wall paintings. Largely chronological, artworks appear in environments that evoke the exhibition conventions at the time the works were made, from salon-style arrangements and the intimate setting of a modernist home to the experimental spaces of artist-run centres and contemporary white cube galleries.

“A permanent collection is the sum of choices made throughout an institution’s history,” says Diana Freundl, Senior Curator & Interim Director of Collections. “Highlights from the Collection reflects the Gallery’s values at different moments in history. Through the artworks selected and the exhibition design, we hope to make visible those shifts in priorities and aesthetics over time. This project draws on the combined perspectives and expertise of the Gallery’s curatorial team; it has been deeply collaborative.”

Visitors begin their journey with an acknowledgment of the central, ongoing place of contemporary and Historic Indigenous Art in this region, including 19th century Haida totem poles, masks and silver jewellery. The section Early Collecting introduces the artistic histories and ideas that shaped the Gallery’s beginnings, bringing together works by Canadian photographer William Notman and Group of Seven painter Lawren Harris alongside Emily Carr, whose modernist depictions of Pacific Northwest forests continue to influence how the region is seen and represented in art today.

Modernisms on the West Coast explores Vancouver’s postwar embrace of abstraction and modern design, with works by BC Binning, Rita Letendre and Jack Shadbolt, while Street Photography highlights artists such as Fred Herzog—now Vancouver’s most widely recognized street photographer—whose vibrant images capture the rich textures of everyday life in the city. In Pop & Prints, works by Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg reflect the impact of consumer culture, alongside works that play with scale and materials by artists including Gathie Falk and Dan Flavin. Claes Oldenburg’s Saw (Hard Version), commissioned for a 1969 exhibition at the Gallery, stands as a testament to the bold experimentation of the era.

The exhibition continues with Video & Performance, examining the Gallery as a key venue for interdisciplinary and time-based work in the 1960s and 70s. The Rotunda is transformed by performance documentation and video works from local and international artists, including Paul Wong, Robert Smithson and Nam June Paik. It concludes with Photoconceptualism, which redefined photography’s role in contemporary art, alongside Contemporary Collecting, highlighting the 1980s as a transformative period of expansion for the Gallery’s collection. New acquisitions underscore this evolution, with photography by Thomas Ruff and Cindy Sherman presented alongside significant works by Vancouver’s leading photo-based artists, including Marian Penner Bancroft, Dana Claxton, Stan Douglas, Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace and Yin-me Yoon.

Highlights from the Collection is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery Curatorial Department and will be on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery from March 27, 2026. An exclusive media preview, tour and Q&A will take place on Wednesday, April 8 at 4 PM. Email media@vanartgallery.bc.ca to RSVP.

To coincide with the launch of the permanent collection floor, the Gallery is producing a richly illustrated hardcover publication, the most significant record of our collection to date. Featuring a visual history and catalogue entries by members of the Gallery’s current and former curatorial team—including Daina Augaitis, Grant Arnold, Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Bruce Grenville, Ian M. Thom and Scott Watson—this publication offers a visual overview of the Gallery’s holdings through a closer look at the stories and scandals behind 110 beloved works and lesser-known treasures.