Winnipeg to Open World's Largest Inuit Art Center by 2020

Winnipeg, Manitoba, will become home to the world's largest Inuit art center, set to open in 2020. The Inuit Art Centre, a 4,000-square-meter facility, will house a collection of 13,000 contemporary and traditional Inuit artworks. The project is spearheaded by the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG), founded in 1937, which will continue its educational programs while the new center replaces its previous Inuit art space. Total cost is 65 million Canadian dollars, with 50 million already raised: 15 million from the federal government, 10 million from the province of Manitoba, and 5 million from the city of Winnipeg. The center will include multiple spaces, storage, studios, theaters, and educational programs. A companion website, inuit.wag.ca, already offers stories and resources about Inuit artists. The initiative is framed as part of Canada's reconciliation efforts, connecting North and South. Notably, the Inuit collective Isuma—founded in 1990 by Zacharias Kunuk, Norman Cohn, Paul Apak Angilirq, and Pauloosie Qulitalik—has been selected to represent Canada at the 2019 Venice Biennale, directed by Ralph Rugoff. Isuma, meaning "to think" in Inuktitut, preserves Inuit culture through video art. In 2008, they launched IsumaTV, the first website dedicated to Inuit art, featuring over 6,000 films and videos in 84 languages. The Igloolik Isuma archive, held at the National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives, contains thousands of hours of raw footage and interviews with Inuit elders.