Who Are We?

 Artspace Inc. is located within the 55,000 square foot historic Gault (Artspace) building in Winnipeg’s Exchange District. It is an arts service organization that supports its membership and the Manitoba arts and cultural community at large with administrative services, and the provision of affordable creation, production, exhibition and administration space.

Incorporated in 1984, Artspace Inc. is a not for profit organization and a registered charity. It's governed by a twelve person Board of Directors and the Artspace building is home to eighteen of Manitoba's arts and cultural organizations and a number of individual artists. 

Since inception, Artspace Inc. has had a profound and positive effect on the development of arts and culture in Manitoba, and has been a major contributor to the Exchange District’s emergence as a historic and cultural destination.

Photograph of Clark Ferguson's exhibition, "In Search of Desire" at Platform Gallery

Get in Touch

Mail, Phone, Fax or Email.

Randy Joynt, Executive Director. gm@art-space.ca

Ian King, Administrative Assistant. mail@art-space.ca

Phone: (204) 947-0984 Fax: (204) 942-1555 

425-100 Arthur Street. Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 1H3

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Under Our Roof

Artspace Residents

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Artspace Inc.

In 1980, the Winnipeg Core Area Initiative, a tri-level plan to revive Winnipeg’s downtown was announced. As part of the Core Area Initiative hearings, Winnipeg’s arts community successfully lobbied to have arts accommodation included as part of the Historic Area Development program.

Two proposals were studied: a performing arts centre, and a literary and visual arts centre. An inventory of the Exchange District buildings was conducted. Based primarily on the lack of suitable clear span space required for a performing arts centre, the establishment of a literary and visual arts centre in the Gault building was recommended to the Core Area Initiative in 1983.

From this recommendation, Artspace Inc., a non-profit arts corporation was constituted in 1984 to coordinate the development of the literary and visual arts centre. $1.5 million was designated for the project from the Core Area Initiative and negotiations with the City of Winnipeg and the Province of Manitoba resulted in the Provincial Crown Corporation, the Manitoba Centennial Centre Corporation assuming ownership of the Gault building and leasing it to Artspace Inc. for a term of ninety-nine years.

The building is fully occupied and the tenants enjoy below market value rent which allows a greater portion of their resources to be devoted to their own program delivery. The shared services (boardroom, lobby, photocopier, postage machine) provide the same benefit. Perhaps the greatest success of Artspace to date has been colocating like-minded, yet unique organizations and artists under one roof, which alleviates the isolation of creative practice and encourages collaboration and the sharing of resources.

The Gault Building

Built in 1900 to accommodate the expansion of Montreal wholesalers A.F. Gault and Company into Winnipeg, the four-storey stone and brick building at 100 Arthur Street was applauded as one of the most commodious warehouses in the City. Designed by architect George Brown of Toronto, the building was based on the “Richardson Romanesque” structures of H.H. Richardson, erected in Chicago during the 1870s and 1880s. The building is an example of the use of masonry construction at its peak, soon to be dwarfed by the masonry-clad steel-framed buildings of the early 20th century.

The original four-storey façade expresses the nature of masonry construction as a “stacking up” process, and indicates the varying wall thickness required at each level to support the weight of the floors above. Within the structure a simple wooden post and beam system is used. The large window openings which provide delighting to the interior were made possible by the advanced state of masonry construction and foreshadow the even larger openings to be offered by steel frame construction.

When in 1903 Gault’s expanded their facilities by building a six-storey addition onto the south wall (92 Arthur Street) and adding two storeys to the original structure, architect James H. Cadham approached the project in a manner sympathetic to the original building. For the first four floors of the new building he repeated the order of the original façade, with the addition of a driveway through the building which sheltered the loading docks. For the top two floors required over both buildings he repeated the order of the top floor of the original building. It is virtually impossible to tell that the Gault Building is in fact two, separate buildings.

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