A group of Italian-Canadians from the Toronto area has donated $10 million to the Art Gallery of Ontario, which is in the midst of a major renovation.

The AGO's new sculpture gallery will be named Galleria Italia in honour of the gift, which includes $500,000 from each of 19 prominent families, and another $500,000 from the Telelatino TV group and its Italian-Canadian backers.

The AGO sculpture gallery, a light-filled gallery stretching almost a city block, will be named Galleria Italia.
(Art Gallery of Ontario)

AGO trustee and vice-president Tony Gagliano spearheaded the campaign to link the Italian community to the art gallery.

At a press conference at the AGO on Wednesday, he recalled a night last September when he and three other prominent members of the Italian community — Mario Romano, Toni Varone and Felice Sabatino — first spoke about making a contribution to the community.

"The more wine we had that evening, the more possible it seemed, but finding that initiative, well, that would be difficult," Gagliano said.

Gagliano's own father, an immigrant who began a small print shop in the 1950s that eventually become St. Joseph's Communications, had planted the idea.

"The … question was posed by my father, Gaetano Gagliano, who at almost 90 asked his children if they would help pay his debt to the two countries in the world that he loved the most — Canada and Italy," Gagliano said.

Gagliano had been sitting on the AGO board for four years and he greatly admired Frank Gehry, the Toronto-born architect who is redesigning the building.

On a trip to Los Angeles with AGO chief executive Matthew Teitelbaum, Gagliano noted the beautiful sculpture gallery that would run along the north side of the building.

He conceived the idea of connecting the glass-walled gallery, almost a block long and the most striking feature of the renovation, with Toronto's Italian community.

The idea could prove a template for fundraising for the arts in a city like Toronto, home to so many immigrant groups.

Love, honour, tribute

The initiative "would signal the love we feel for Italy while honouring Canada, the country we have also come to love, and where most of us learned that anything and everything is possible," Gagliano said.

"Finally, this one initiative would also pay tribute to our ancestors: Da Vinci, Bernini, Michelangelo and others."

Gagliano's drive and energy were responsible for recruiting Italian families to the campaign.

Among them are a who's who of prominent Italian Canadians, including the Longo family and the Pusateri family, founders of the grocery chains, the D'Alessandro family (connected to Manulife Financial) and the Sorbara family, the same Sorbaras who gave Ontario its current finance minister.

On Wednesday Finance Minister Greg Sorbara congratulated the group on behalf of the Ontario government, and noted that his father came to Canada in 1926, penniless, and built a successful construction business, now run by his two brothers.

The $10-million gift puts the AGO's fund to pay for its expansion at $225 million, or 88 per cent of its goal. Estimated total cost of the project is $254 million.

And the Italian connection may play out in longer-term benefits for the AGO.

Toronto's Italian Consulate sits across the street from the new Galleria Italia and the Italian ambassador, Gabriele Sardo, made an apparently impromptu offer at the news conference to donate a collection of contemporary Italian sculpture to the gallery.

He also pledged ongoing talks with Italy on artistic exchanges.

The AGO plans to commission a new sculpture — from an artist yet to be chosen — to commemorate the contribution.

The gallery will close in October for the final phase of the renovation and to reinstall its collection. It is scheduled to reopen in mid-2008.