The People's gallery has been created from the servant's room and an adjacent room, both which were gutted by fire in 1938. This room is now used to showcase contemporary artists, many of whom have been influenced by Emily Carr.

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Victoria I had only come up against my own class. The art society, called 'Island Arts and Crafts,' were the exponents of Art on Vancouver Island, an extremely exclusive set...The Club held exhibitions, affairs of tinkling teacups, tinkling conversation and little tinkling landscapes weakly executed in water colours. None except their own class went to these exhibitions...Ordinary people would never dream of straying into an 'Arts and Crafts' exhibition, would have been made feel awkward had they done so.

An idea popped into my head. I would give an exhibition for ordinary people, invite the general public, but not invite the Arts and Crafts...

The exhibition was a varied show and so successful that a few of us got together, working on the idea of starting a People's Art Gallery in these six rooms of mine...To drop in, sit by an open fire, warm, rest themselves and look at pictures, might appeal to the public...

My friend Eric Brown, of the Canadian National Gallery at Ottawa, was enthusiastic over my plan and promised to send exhibitions out from Ottawa. But influential Victorians were uninterested, apathetic. Why, they asked, was it not sponsored by the Arts and Crafts Society? Vancouver had just built herself a fine Art Gallery. It was endowed. Unless Victoria could do something bigger and more flamboyant than Vancouver she would do nothing at all.

...The people's gallery did not materialize. The everyday public were disappointed. The wealthy closed their lips and their purses. The Arts and Crafts Society smiled a high-nosed superior smile. Lee Nam, the Chinese artist, many boys and girls and young artists were keenly disappointed."

--The House of All Sorts By Emily Carr.

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