Art Gallery of Ontario

Founded in 1900 by a group of private citizens as the Art Museum of Toronto, the Art Gallery of Ontario is one of the largest art museums in North America, with over 90,000 works in its collection and a physical facility of 583,000 square feet. More than 4,000 works from the collection are on public view. 

The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), in partnership with Facing History and Ourselves and the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre, has developed a digital archive of more than 4,000 rarely seen images from its Henryk Ross Collection of Lodz Ghetto Photographs. Created for educators, students, scholars and others interested in the history of the Lodz Ghetto, the website, www.AGOLodzGhetto.com, features searchable, digital renderings of Henryk Ross’s original nitrate-based negatives. The launch of the digital archive marks the 70th anniversary of Ross’s physical unearthing of the original negatives in 1945. Before the ghetto was shut down, Ross buried his negatives with other artifacts, hoping that his collection might one day become part of the public history of World War II. Fortunately, he was able to recover the buried material.