Best Gallery

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Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Best of Halifax 2022 gold winner of Best Gallery

GOLD WINNER

SILVER WINNER

BRONZE WINNER

While the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia takes home the top prize for Best Gallery in 2022, it’s doubtless that this year hasn’t been strictly golden for the province’s largest collector of visual culture. First, a shake-up in leadership that saw then-CEO Nancy Noble’s contract not get renewed in February. (Grant Machum, acting board chair, told The Coast at the time that "we were at the end of her five-year term contract and it was a natural place to think about whether we renew the contract or not….And we thought: We need a new type of leader for the new gallery, someone that is experienced in running a gallery of that calibre.”) Then, in late July, the province announced a freeze on investing in the new Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, a building project that was meant to break ground this year at what’s now a parking lot at the end of Salter Street. The news seemed to catch the gallery itself by surprise, as a pamphlet hyping the project landed in south end Halifax mailboxes a day after the province pressed pause. While the government’s decision to hold off on handing over the planned $70 million investment means that the future of a new gallery space is uncertain, this win shows the city still has love for the OG AGNS location at 1723 Hollis Street. A good thing, it’d seem, since it’s now unclear when (and if) the long-awaited updated art gallery will break ground.