1974
January
The Women’s Committee supports the purchase of the Ivan Eyre painting Tanglewood, marking the City of Winnipeg’s Centennial. Valued at...
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Businessman Augustus Searle Leach Jr. becomes Board President.
April
The Development of Canadian Silver opens on April 3.
The WAG-organized exhibition includes almost 200 works on loan from the Henry Birks...
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September
Roger Selby (1934–1995) replaces Dr. Ferdinand Eckhardt (1902–1995) as WAG Director.
The new American Director, specializing in both...
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December
Sonia Eckhardt-Gramatté (1899–1974), wife of former Director Ferdinand Eckhardt (1902–1995) and internationally acclaimed...
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1975
January
The options available in WAG Studio classes for children, teenagers, and adults expand to include filmmaking, pottery, art appreciation, basic...
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Around the same time, Jean Bloggett is hired as the first curator devoted exclusively to Inuit art. William Kirby becomes the Gallery’s...
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May
The Women’s Committee marks International Women’s Year with the purchase of an Inuit sculpture, Camp Scene, by P.O.V. Abraham...
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June
Vicky Wilson becomes President of the Women’s Committee.
July
Tilt! Pinball Machines 1931–1958, organized by Regina’s Dunlop Art Gallery, opens at the WAG on July 7.
This unorthodox and...
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September
The WAG introduces special membership rates for full-time students and seniors.
November
Two very different exhibitions open at the Gallery, both marking International Women’s Year: Images of Women and Woman as Viewer. The latter...
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December
The WAG awards its one-millionth visitor to the new Gallery building with a framed colour print by artist Don Proch.
1976
February
The exhibition Pitseolak. Retrospective. Graphic Works opens on February 13, representing “the first time an artist from Canada’s...
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Later in February, the exhibition Americans in Florence: Europeans in Florence opens.
The exhibition is a loan from the Long Beach Museum of Art...
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March
The Pipoon Festival, presented by the Indian and Metis Friendship Centre of Winnipeg, opens in the Gallery’s main foyer (today Eckhardt...
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April
Manitoba’s parks department announces plans to fund an extensive landscape design project for the roof of the Gallery, in consultation with...
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May
The Hudson’s Bay Company presents a cheque for $30,000, then the largest single donation in the Gallery’s history, toward the...
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On May 11, two key individuals in the WAG’s history are honoured in with the official designation of the Muriel Richardson Auditorium and...
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June
The Women’s Committee is renamed the Volunteer Committee. Manitoba’s Lieutenant-Governor Francis Laurence Jobin (1914–1995)...
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As a result of increased government operations funding, the Volunteer Committee redirects its attention to a limited set of key areas of Gallery...
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August
In August, the Gallery acquires a major collection of Inuit art—over 900 works—from the University of Manitoba professor and artist...
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The exhibition Master Paintings from the Hermitage and the State Russian Museum opens later that month.
“Undisputedly,” Roger Selby...
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September
In September, the Gallery announces that three of its curators—Ann Davis, Patricia Bovey, and Jean Blodgett—will begin teaching...
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November
The exhibition Port Harrison/Inoucdjouac opens on November 20, representing the first of a series of exhibitions devoted to the art of particular...
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1977
February
The Education Department begins its popular Art for Lunch series. These free midday presentations and discussions focus on different aspects of...
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March
The Gallery announces the creation of a series of lectures in conjunction with the University of Manitoba entitled Scholars’ Forum, which...
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May
The group Jazzmobile, headed by jazz legend Billy Taylor (1921–2010), performs at the WAG. The event spawns the Gallery’s popular...
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June
In June, Dr. Clara Lander (1916–1978) becomes President of the Board, the first woman to hold the position in the WAG’s history.
Lawyer Helen Mary Arpin (1926–2012) becomes President of the Volunteer Committee.
July
A small but innovative exhibition, Looking South, opens on July 16, presenting “works of art made by the [Inuit], but inspired or influenced...
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The exhibition Sculpture on the Prairies opens the same day, featuring a range of practices from modernist sculpture, to installation, to...
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August
Director Roger Selby (1934–1995) reports that “through the support of many individuals and corporations, the endeavours of the Board...
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A WAG-organized exhibition, Ministic Sculpture, featuring 40 stone carvings by 21 Saulteaux artists, including Saunders Keno (1934–2003),...
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October
Reflecting the increasingly contemporary and innovative programming at the Gallery, the WAG hosts The 1984 Miss General Idea Pageant...
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That month, the WAG acquires the 1975 photo-realist painting Marcia by American artist Ben Schonzeit. The portrait is of the artist’s wife,...
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Canadian Political Cartoons opens on October 28, featuring works of satirical caricature loaned from collections across the country. The...
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November
The Gallery begins an international film series, which carries into 1978, exploring sexuality in cinema.
Films range from the silent classic Sex...
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1978
February
A fundraising drive is launched to purchase hundreds of drawings and print-drawings used to create prints by Inuit artists in Baker Lake, at the...
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The first Winnipeg Perspective exhibition opens on February 24. The exhibition includes work by a dozen artists, including Gordon Lebredt...
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March
On March 11, The Coming and Going of the Shaman: Eskimo Shamanism and Art opens. Organized by the WAG, it represents one of the first Inuit...
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May
Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald: The Development of An Artist, a major reassessment of the career of FitzGerald (1890–1956), opens on May 24. The...
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June
In June, lawyer and businessman Arthur V. Mauro becomes President of the Board.
Karyn Allen becomes the Gallery’s Associate Curator of Contemporary Art.
Jim Steranko: Graphic Narrative. The Structure of Comics opens at the WAG on June 30. To hear Ted Howorth, printmaker and lecturer at the...
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July
American Narrative/Story Art: 1967–1977, a major exhibition of contemporary American art from the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, opens...
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October
The WAG Education Department begins offering an experimental film series entitled Images, Ideas, Issues.
The series continues through to May 1979...
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November
John Alexander MacAulay (1895–1978), longtime WAG Board Member, supporter, and Honorary President for life, dies.
In the...
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The group exhibition Form and Performance opens on November 10.
The exhibition includes work by Winnipeg artists whose work incorporates...
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December
The Winnipeg Art Gallery Foundation is incorporated. To hear longtime volunteer Marjorie Drache describe the Volunteer Associates’...
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1979
January
Nancy Dillow becomes the Gallery’s first Chief Curator. Bernadette Driscoll replaces Jean Bloggett as Curator of Inuit Art. Shirley Madill...
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February
The exhibition Frontiers of Our Dreams: Quebec Painting in the 1940s and 1950s opens on February 9. The WAG-organized exhibition constitutes a...
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March
WAG Director Roger Selby (1934–1995) is elected President of the Canadian Art Museums Directors Organization.
Also in March, the Gallery’s library is officially named the Clara Lander Library, in memory of long-serving volunteer and Board Member Dr....
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May
The second annual Festival of Art and Food is held. This year, the three-day event attracts over 9,000 people.
The Gallery’s April...
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June
Pricilla Veitch becomes President of the Volunteer Associates.
July
On July 22, the exhibition Dennis Oppenheim: Works 1967–1977 goes on display.
Oppenheim (1938–2011), a significant American...
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August
The Gallery acquires a collection of over 80 works of Inuit art, mostly done in ivory, bequeathed from Dr. Albert Clifford Abbott...
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1980
January
Elizabeth Legge becomes Associate Curator. In 1981, she leaves Winnipeg to pursue studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art as a Commonwealth...
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February
The innovative historical, and WAG-organized, exhibition Bustles and Rosepetals: Fashion is Art, 1882–1910 opens on February 22.
The...
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March
The world-renowned philosopher Paul Churchland, then a professor at the University of Manitoba, delivers a lecture entitled “Intellectual...
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April
It becomes public knowledge that an exhibition of Ukrainian art, planned for October, would be cancelled.
Federal support for the...
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June
Businessman John D. C. Kassenaar becomes Board President.
August
The Inuit Amautik: I Like My Hood To Be Full, an exhibition exploring Inuit clothing, opens at the Gallery opens on August 8.
September
Director Roger Selby (1934–1995) publically identifies photography as a specialized area of the collection, and one that he aims to...
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November
Kathleen Campbell becomes the WAG’s first Curator of Decorative Arts.
French artist Christo visits the WAG to deliver a public lecture and discussion on his famous land art project Running Fence, a 24-mile fabric...
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1981
February
The WAG begins its Manitoba Series of exhibitions, bringing audiences into closer contact with new works by artists residing in the...
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June
Carol Barbee is elected President of the Volunteer Committee.
Today, then the country’s highest circulation magazine, awards the WAG the distinction of being Canada’s best art gallery.
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November
The exhibition Occurrences: 4 Manitoba Painters opens. Artists include Caroline Dukes (1929–2003), Aliana Au, Jill Brooks, and Celia...
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1982
February
With the acquisition of a stoneware vase by the British studio potter Bernard Howell Leach (1887–1979)in February, the WAG demonstrates...
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April
Marcel Breuer: Furniture and Interiors, a major exhibition from the Museum of Modern Art in New York of furniture by modern 20th century architect...
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May
On May 10 the internationally acclaimed virtuoso violinist Eugene Fodor (1950–2011) performs at the WAG’s Muriel Richardson...
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June
Accountant Donald E. Vernon becomes Board President.
September
The WAG purchases its first art-transport vehicles, used for shipping and receiving Gallery supplies and works of art.
October
In October The Pleasures of Poetry, an annual lecture series on poets and poetry running to April and led by famed University of Manitoba...
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The WAG-organized exhibition A Distant Harmony opens on October 8.
A Distant Harmony compares Canadian painters from the 19th and 20th centuries...
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November
Director Roger Selby (1934–1995) predicts that “Winnipeg might one day become a study centre for Inuit art.” In 2012, this dream...
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December
A work by American minimalist Dan Flavin (1931–1996) is donated to the WAG by Dr. William and Isabelle Campbell.
[The Campbells, who...
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1983
February
The WAG presents Baker Lake: Prints and Drawings 1970–1976.
This exhibition capitalizes on the major acquisitions the Gallery had...
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April
The famed New York Times art critic John Canaday (1907–1985) delivers a lecture entitled “The Artist, the Critic, and the...
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May
The exhibition Latitudes and Parallels: Focus on Contemporary Photography opens on May 26. This juried WAG-organized exhibition includes 80 works...
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June
Elaine Margolis becomes President of the Volunteer Committee.
July
Following the resignation of Roger Selby (1934–1995), the WAG hires a new Director, Terrence Heath.
The year’s major Inuit exhibition entitled Baffin Island opens on July 23.
As its title suggests, Baffin Island encompasses an entire...
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September
In memory of the life of Dorothy Naylor (1908–1983), a supporter, important donor of decorative art, early Gallery volunteer and Board...
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A Boundless Horizon, curated by Dr. Virginia Berry (d. 2003), longstanding WAG volunteer and former President of the Women’s Committee...
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