WHENEVER I PASS the Art Gallery of Ontario, or the AGO, as it is more commonly called, a sense of pleasure washes through me, born from the stock of pleasant memories I have of the place: visiting the gallery as a university student new to Toronto; taking small children to Sunday morning art activities; wandering around the gallery with a seven-year-old who was fascinated with the gore and angels of religious art; and, on frosty days during the winter holidays, visiting the Grange, the AGO's restored 1817 house, which would be redolent of wood fires and baking.

This year, the AGO has been celebrating its 100th anniversary. Throughout much of the late 1800s, leading citizens of Toronto had been calling for an art gallery. "Among the attractions we yet lack," said a Saturday Night magazine article at the time, "[are] a good picture gallery and a museum worthy of the name." In 1900, the Art Museum of Toronto was officially born. But it was a museum in name only, for it had no collection and no site. The problem was to be solved in 1911, when the Art Museum inherited the Grange from a childless couple, Goldwin Smith, a political writer and former Oxford University professor, and his wife, Harriette.

As its collection developed, the gallery outgrew its quarters in the Grange, and in 1918 a new wing was opened. The institution changed its name to the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1965, reflecting the fact that it was sending exhibits throughout the province. Further extensions and renovations were undertaken in the 1970s and the 1990s. Today, the AGO is one of the largest art galleries in North America with 25,000 works to its name, including paintings by such European masters as Rembrandt and Tintoretto; a broad selection of pieces by the Group of Seven; an extensive collection of Inuit art; and the world's largest public collection of works by British sculptor Henry Moore.

One of Moore's pieces, a large abstract sculpture that sits in the open on a street corner outside the gallery, is an irresistible climbing object for children. I've often wondered how the gallery feels about one of its works being enjoyed in this way, and when I spent an afternoon at the AGO recently, I put the question to Jennifer Rieger, an assistant curator who has responsibility for the Grange. "It's fine," she told me with a smile. "We have the piece refinished every couple of years."

It is this attitude, this belief that a gallery should be a place where people feel welcome and unintimidated, and where art can be appreciated in a multitude of ways, that makes the AGO – and I suspect a number of galleries across this country that work hard to interact with the public – special.

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RIEGER AND I WANDERED through the Grange, which was restored in the early 1970s to represent the house of a gentleman of 1835. Careful attention was paid to selecting furnishings that not just accurately represented the times but that revealed something of the mindset of the day. "William Lyon Mackenzie wrote an article in the Colonial Advocate criticizing D'Arcy Bolton, who owned the Grange during the 1830s, for buying some of his furniture in the United States rather than supporting Canadian craftspeople. So when the restoration was done, the gallery was careful to include an American piece," Rieger told me, pointing out a mahogany pier table with a marble top.

Currently, the Grange is playing host to an exhibit called "House Guests," organized to celebrate the AGO's centennial. "When the gallery was first established, contemporary artists were invited to contribute works," said Rieger, "so it seemed appropriate to mark the 100th anniversary by doing the same thing."

The exhibit cleverly combines whimsy with poignancy. In the master bedroom, for example, artist Rebecca Belmore has drawn on her First Nations heritage to decorate the canopy bed, the most obvious accoutrements being swaths of long dark hair. Belmore, states a pamphlet about the exhibit, "has come to stay in the 'best bedroom' of this house, where her ancestors would never have been permitted."

In the main gallery, where we made our way through richly coloured rooms of old and modern Canadian and European art and a room of photographs on war, Rieger chatted about the recent exhibit from St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum and the relationship that has developed between the two galleries, and of the vital role gallery volunteers have long played. We walked past Walker's Court, where empty picture frames decorate the burnt orange walls. "We had a lot of frames," Rieger said with a hint of humour. I was impressed, as I often am, by the resourcefulness of the gallery's keepers.

As I prepared to leave, I asked Rieger why she thought art was important to society. "Art is important in so many ways," she told me thoughtfully. "Artists see the world from different standpoints. Seeing it through their eyes helps broaden people's perspectives. Art is important to education. It teaches skills. The actual creation of art is all about problem solving, developing creative imagination and taking risks. These are skills and attributes we want in our society."

Rieger also talked about the "healing power of art" and the quiet reflection it encourages. And as I walked out of the gallery on a grey day in late fall when the world was full of woe, I did feel a little restored. – Sarah Lawley