The National Gallery of Canada has announced its 2026 radiant spring-summer season, featuring a diverse lineup of exhibitions. Highlights include "Qillaniq," a showcase of global Arctic brilliance, and an exploration of the impressionist world of Helen McNicoll, alongside other exhibitions and programming.
The exhibition "Parallax(e): Perspectives on the Canada–US Border" at The Reach Gallery Museum in Abbotsford, British Columbia, brings together archival materials from the Northwest Boundary Survey (1857–62) with new works by five Indigenous artists. The show features photographs, maps, and watercolors from British and American surveyors alongside commissions by Dr. Shawn Brigman, Dr. Michelle Jack, Deb Silver, Xémóntalot Carrielynn Victor, and Dr. T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss, who respond to the legacy of the border's creation through canoe culture, transboundary identity, and place-based knowledge.
Cowley Abbott Fine Art, a Toronto-based auction house, has opened its first permanent western Canada gallery in Calgary's East Village. The new space launches with a three-day public preview of museum-quality artworks heading to its Spring Live Auction on May 27 at the Globe and Mail Centre in Toronto. Highlights include rare works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Emily Carr, and members of the Group of Seven such as Lawren Harris and A.Y. Jackson. Among the standout pieces is Emily Carr's 1936 canvas "Wind," estimated at $500,000 to $700,000, and a Lawren Harris painting valued similarly. The gallery aims to attract both collectors and casual visitors, with Peter Ohler, Western Canada Representative and Director of Private Sales, emphasizing that the space is open to anyone interested in art.
A new commercial gallery, Cowley Abbott Fine Art, is opening in downtown Calgary with a three-day public preview starting April 23, 2026. The gallery will showcase rare masterworks by artists including Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Canadian icons like Emily Carr and Lawren Harris of the Group of Seven. Notably, an Emily Carr painting from the 1930s, last exhibited nearly a century ago, will be on view.
The Audain Art Museum in Whistler, British Columbia, raised a record-breaking $1.5 million at its 2026 annual gala, marking the institution's 10-year anniversary. The sold-out event, attended by over 500 guests, featured a live art auction of works by artists in the museum's permanent collection, with Stan Douglas's 1974 piece 'Coat Check' achieving a $200,000 hammer price—the highest ever for the gala.
A focused exhibition at Art Metropole in Toronto presents a selection of mail art submissions by the late transgressive artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge to the Canadian collective General Idea in the 1970s. Drawn from the National Gallery of Canada's collection, the show features letters, collages, photos, and ephemera that capture P-Orridge's early, boundary-pushing work with collectives like COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle.