National Arts Centre
performing arts presenting organization in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
The National Arts Centre (NAC) (French: Centre national des Arts) is a performing arts organization in Ottawa, Ontario, along the Rideau Canal. It is based in the eponymous National Arts Centre building.
History
The NAC was one of several projects launched by the government of Lester B. Pearson to commemorate Canada's 1967 centenary. In 1962, G. Hamilton Southam, scion to the Southam publishing business which owned the Ottawa Citizen, was approached by residents of the city to spearhead the creation of a performing arts facility in Ottawa. After he took the project to the Pearson government the following year, construction was officially approved. Officially proclaimed in 1966, its board of directors received a mandate to "to operate and maintain the Centre, to develop the performing arts in the National Capital region, and to assist the Canada Council in the development of the performing arts elsewhere in Canada". It opened its doors to the public for the first time on May 31, 1969, at a cost of C$46 million. The opening was presided over by then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
In February 2014, the centre unveiled a new logo and slogan, Canada is our stage, in preparation for its fiftieth anniversary in 2019. The former logo had been designed by Montreal graphic designer Ernst Roch and had been in use since the centre's opening.
“National Arts Centre” enters the record as performing arts presenting organization in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what National, Arts and Centre can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“National Arts Centre” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, National, Arts and Centre provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2945952. VIAF identifies the subject as 127605806. The Library of Congress control number is n80051756. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1967, 1962, 1966 and 1969.
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This entry incorporates text from “National Arts Centre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.