The upcoming opening of the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s Inuit Art Centre this fall will also see the opening of a new restaurant, which the WAG promises will itself be “art-infused.”
Sparrow Hotels will operate the upcoming café, which has not yet been named. It will have indoor and outdoor seating spaces and will be licensed, in addition to featuring a full menu for catering, the WAG announced Tuesday.
“Our new café will be one of downtown Winnipeg’s most unique, art-infused eateries,” gallery director and CEO Stephen Borys said in a news release.
“The welcoming indoor space and summer and fall patio and will provide a new year-round gathering place for our community.”
The new food establishment will be on the main level of the Inuit Art Centre, which is currently under construction at the corner of St. Mary Avenue and Memorial Boulevard and is expected to house the largest public collection of contemporary Inuit art in the world.
The previous restaurant on the existing WAG building’s penthouse level was permanently shut down when construction of the new art centre began in May 2018. That dining area on the gallery’s fourth floor is being transformed into digital media suites.
Winnipeg-based Sparrow Hotels — which is the business behind Inn at the Forks, Smith restaurant, Mere Hotel and the newly revamped Norwood Hotel — took over the gallery’s food and catering services in November.
Sparrow Hotels was selected to manage the gallery’s food services in a deal that is similar to the arrangement between Canadian Museum for Human Rights and its catering company, the WAG said.
The new restaurant is set to open, along with the Inuit Art Centre, in late fall 2020.
