The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Public art gallery in Oshawa, Canada
The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is a public art gallery overlooking Queen Street in central Oshawa, housed in a compact modernist building with a later addition. Its interior opens around a bright lobby where daylight falls from above, and the rooms hold a large collection of Canadian paintings, sculptures and prints, with many abstract works on the walls.
The gallery grew from a small commercial exhibition space organized on Simcoe Street by local designer William Caldwell. Ewart McLaughlin and his wife, painter Alexandra Luke, then gave money and works from their own collection, and the institution was incorporated under the name of Ewart’s grandfather, the founder of the McLaughlin Carriage Company.
Many visitors come specifically for the Painters Eleven room, where bold colour fields and loose gestures hang close together, giving a sense of how a small group of Ontario painters pushed local art away from landscape tradition. In the permanent collection galleries, you can also see how contemporary Canadian works have been placed next to older pieces, showing a visible link between generations of artists.
Several rooms are spread over a single main level, so visitors can move between galleries without stairs, and wheelchairs can enter throughout. It is best to allow at least an hour for a comfortable walk around, and photography is permitted in most areas.
A less visible detail is that the original institution was established with a founding gift of only 37 works from Alexandra Luke, yet it now holds the largest Painters Eleven holding in the country. The architect Arthur Erickson designed the later expansion around the existing structure rather than replacing it, which is why a visitor can still feel the older gallery inside the larger envelope.
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