Beaverbrook Art Gallery

Beaverbrook Art Gallery

Beaverbrook Art Gallery in 2014.
Established	1959
Location	703 Queen Street Fredericton, New Brunswick E3B 1C4
Type	Art museum
Collection size	4900 works (2016)
Visitors	25,000 annually (2012)
Founder	William Maxwell "Max" Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook
Director	Terry Graff
Curator	Jeffrey Spalding
Public transit access	16N Marysville (Fredericton Transit)
Nearest car park	Queen Street, East End Parking Garage
Website	www.beaverbrookartgallery.org

The Beaverbrook Art Gallery is a public art gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. It is named after William Maxwell "Max" Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, who funded the building of the gallery and assembled the original collection. It opened in 1959 with over 300 works, including paintings by J.M.W. Turner and Salvador Dalí. The Beaverbrook Art Gallery is New Brunswick's officially designated provincial art gallery. The building has undergone several expansions, the latest of which began in 2015 and is expected to be completed in 2017. Gallery director and CEO Terry Graff stated that this "expansion and revitalization" aimed to make the gallery "an important destination for national and international contemporary art".

In 1954 Lord Beaverbrook made an offer to Hugh John Flemming, the Premier of New Brunswick, to build and stock an art gallery in Fredericton. The Province accepted the proposal, and provided him with a site directly across from the New Brunswick Legislative Building on the southern bank of the Saint John River. Neil Stewart, of the Fredericton architectural firm Howell & Stewart, designed the mid-century modern building as a flat-roofed single-storey structure, faced with pale semi-glazed brick. It has a granite base, with cornices and a frieze of white marble quarried at Philipsburg, Quebec. The original exhibition space consisted of a high-ceilinged central gallery with a square gallery on either side.

In 1983 the building was expanded with the addition of east and west wings. These additions, funded by Marguerite Vaughan and the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation respectively, housed the Hosmer Pillow Vaughan collection of china and other decorative arts, and the Sir Max Aitken Gallery. In 1995 another expansion, housing the Marion McCain Atlantic Gallery, was opened. Its name honours the late wife of New Brunswick businessman Harrison McCain, who contributed $1 milion to the project.