TD Financial Group Inuit Art Gallery

To help celebrate the centennial of Canada, the Toronto-Dominion Bank, which is today part of the TD Financial Group, decided to collect Inuit art with the objective of establishing the “world’s finest and most comprehensive collection of Inuit art”. In 1982 a permanent home for the TD Inuit Art Collection was found in the fourth tower of the TD Centre. Today, over 30 years since opening, attendance levels are relatively low, in part because of a relatively small space, a lack of visibility, and the fact that the mode of display is very static and does not offer the interactivity and other contemporary methods of interpretation increasingly sought by visitors. The nation’s sesquicentennial in 2017 has created a new opportunity to enhance the visitor experience associated with the Inuit Art Collection and to relocate it to the Mies Van der Rohe designed TD Main Branch building.

Lord Cultural Resources was engaged to conduct the first phase of a planning study focused on a comparison between the existing and new sites and considers their opportunities and constraints from the perspectives of the collections, market, facilities, operations and visitor experience. The analysis leads to development of options and recommendations for an enhanced visitor experience and other aspects associated with the Concept for the future TD Inuit Art Gallery. Our report offered two main conceptual options for the visitor experience for the Gallery along with opportunities and constraints as well as budget ranges associated with each exhibit in order to guide the decision-making process.