Art Metropole was founded by the Canadian artists collective General Idea as a non-profit artist-run archive and distribution agency for artists' publications and other materials.

The three artists of General Idea had been publishing their periodical FILE since 1972. The enormous interest they found internationally led them to found Art Metropole as a means for other artists to access their distribution system. They had also begun to amass a collection of artists books and ephemera, and this they saw as the beginnings of the Art Metropole Collection. In 1974 they opened their doors to the public in an abandoned space over a Greek restaurant in downtown Toronto. The building had originally been built in 1911 for one of Toronto's earliest art galleries, Art Metropole (which closed in the forties), and from this came the name.

In 1975 Peggy Gale joined Art Metropole to initiate our video distribution service, one of the first in the world. In 1987 we discontinued conventional video distribution and began publishing artists' video in low-cost VHS format.

We began publishing books in the late 70s. "Performance by Artists" in 1977 was the first of a series of resource books on new artists' media. The same year we published "3 death stories" by Tom Sherman, the first of a long series of artists books. You can find the complete list of our publications here.

Although we hosted video screenings and book launchings, we did not undertake an exhibition until 1982, when we toured the seminal exhibition "Museums by Artists". In 1984 we presented the first exhibition on our own premises, a ten-year anniversary overview of the Art Metropole Collection. In the late 80s we established a small exhibition/display space and began our regular exhibition program.

In the meantime we continued to produce a series of innovative distribution-based projects such as "Ads by Artists" (1987) and "Billboards by Artists" (1997). In both cases we commissioned artists to produce art works for conventional advertising space, in one case in the advertising section of international art magazines, in the other, on billboards in downtown Toronto.

In 1997 we transferred our permanent collection of over 13,000 items to the National Gallery of Canada. You can find more information about the Art Metropole Collection here.