Architect	Moshe Safdie
Date Built	Completed April 1988
Location	380 Sussex Drive
Description
Moshe Safdie is an Isreali born Canadian architect who has been responsible for a number of important buildings in his adopted country.  The first was the amazing Habitat residential complex that Safdie designed for Expo 67 in Montreal.  The most recent is Lester B Pearson Airport, completed in Toronto in 2007.  In between he created the $123 million National Gallery of Canada which occupies a prominent site on Sussex Drive looking across to the Canadian Parliament Building. The building was constructed of poured concrete, Tadoussac variegated rose granite, and glass and features a cathedral-like great hall from which visitors can access the galleries.  After entering the gallery, visitors walk up a long incline to the great hall designed, as the gallery says, to create, “... an agreeable sense of anticipation”.  When these images were taken in October of 2013, the glass spires above the great hall had been covered in an attempt to make it resemble an iceberg. Outside the gallery stands Louise Bourgeois’s “Maman”, a 30 foot high bronze spider sculpture.  The gallery’s director says that, “Maman is a very important and exciting acquisition for the Gallery and for Canada as a whole.  Her sheer size and extraordinary power make Maman an icon that will turn the National Gallery’s Plaza into a landmark.”  The giant spider with its egg sac containing 26 marble eggs, was a controversial acquisition since it cost $3.2million or about one third of the gallery’s annual budget.  The artist explains that, “The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.” Inside the galleries have been divided into six areas, “... the Canadian collection, the European, American, and Asian galleries, the Inuit galleries, a section for contemporary art (including video), another for prints, drawings, and photographs, and a separate space for temporary exhibitions.”

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