The Henry Moore Sculpture Centre

ABOUT THE COLLECTION

Featuring more than 900 works, including rare plasters, bronze sculptures, maquettes, drawings, prints, and sketchbooks, the AGO is home to the largest public collection of Henry Moore’s artworks in the world. 

Internationally renowned for his large-scale, semi-abstract bronze sculptures, Henry Moore (British, 1889–1986) took the human figure as his principal subject. Born in Yorkshire in Northern England as the seventh child of a miner, Moore began as an outsider to the British art establishment. His deep commitment to direct carving and truth-to-materials, close observation of the natural world, and forms that invited multiple points of view have made him among the most significant sculptors in the Western tradition.

The AGO’s collection began in 1951 with the generous gift of a large bronze, Working Model for Upright Internal and External Forms (1951), by the AGO Women’s Committee. The collection grew significantly in 1974 with the unprecedented donation of 101 sculptures, 57 drawings, and 150 prints by the artist. Later donations by the artist, generous donors, and key acquisitions have helped grow the collection to its current depth. 

Opened in the autumn of 1974, the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre currently features nearly 9,000 square feet of dedicated exhibition space for Henry Moore’s artwork and features spaces named after his late wife, Irina Moore. The Centre features rotating selections of his prints and drawings, plaster works, and examples of his bronze casts and direct carvings in stone and wood. The design of the Centre was the outcome of a close collaboration between Moore and Toronto architect John C. Parkin. The natural lighting and reflective flooring were purposeful choices, intended to give a feeling of lightness to the massive works—their ambition was to make the works appear as though they were floating on a pond.

Since 1974, Henry Moore’s massive bronze sculpture Large Two Forms (1966–1969) has taken pride of place outside the museum—first at the corner of McCaul and Dundas Streets, and, since 2017, in Grange Park.

The AGO has co-organized several important international exhibitions of Moore’s work, including The Shape of Anxiety: Henry Moore in the 1930s (2010) and Francis Bacon and Henry Moore: Terror and Beauty (2016). Similarly, the AGO has published extensively on the artist, including Alan Wilkinson’s The Drawings of Henry Moore (1997) and Henry Moore Remembered: The Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (1987).

The Henry Moore Sculpture Centre and its collection attract numerous artist installations, performances, and interventions by artists including Geoffrey Farmer, Brian Jungen, and KAWS. Currently on display is the recently-acquired sculpture by American artist Hugh Hayden, Can’t we all just get along (2020).

Works from the collection are also available for study in the Marvin Gelber Print and Drawing Study Centre by appointment and during drop-in hours on the first Wednesday of the month.