Mendel Art Gallery

The Mendel Art Gallery was a major creative cultural centre in City Park, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, opened in 1964. Housing a permanent collection of more than 7,500 works of local, regional and national significance, the largest public art collection in the province, the Mendel is also known for its public programs for all ages. It is one of two public art museums with provincial responsibilities. It and its sister institution the Saskatoon Civic Conservatory are located on the west bank of the South Saskatchewan River., it was the 16th largest public art gallery in Canada by budget size and had the sixth highest overall attendance in the country. In 2010, it had more than 180,000 visitors and one of the country's highest per capita attendance rates.HistoryThe Mendel Art Gallery grew out of the Saskatoon Art Centre, which opened in 1944 in the Standard Trust Building and moved several times, the last time in 1963 to a back room on Fourth Avenue North. It was endowed by Frederick "Fred" Salomon Mendel, a refugee from Nazism who founded Intercontinental Packers (now Mitchell's Gourmet Foods, a unit of Maple Leaf Foods) and announced in 1960 that in celebration of his 20th anniversary in Saskatoon, he would give the city money to establish a public art museum. His gift was matched by the Province of Saskatchewan. In 1965 he also donated 15 works by the Group of Seven which became the nucleus of the permanent collection. The modernist building, which opened on October 16, 1964, was designed by the Winnipeg architectural firm Blankstein, Coop, Gillmor and Hanna of Winnipeg (now numberTEN architectural group), led by partner-in-charge Al Hanna and design architect Doug Gillmor, who won the design contest. The Civic Conservatory was built as part of the same project, at the suggestion of the then mayor, S. L. Buckwold. The building was extended in 1975.