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Lined by department stores and offices, downtown Portage Avenue is the city's main shopping street, with a web of underground passageways and glass-enclosed overhead walkways linking the various malls and large stores and providing welcome relief from the summer heat and winter cold. The largest complex is the ugly postmodern Portage Place , on the north side of the avenue, with its main entrance at Kennedy Street (daily: Mon-Wed & Sat 10am-6pm, Thurs & Fri 10am-9pm, Sun noon-5pm). There are over 160 shops and services here, plus a giant-screen IMAX cinema on the third level (information tel 956-IMAX, tickets tel 780-SEAT). Among the many modern buildings that line Portage are some earlier ones that are architecturally attractive: the Paris Building at no. 259, with a splendid piered facade and delicate cornice, and the Boyd Building at no. 388, with cream and bronze terracotta decoration. The uncompromisingly modern Winnipeg Art Gallery ( WAG) , a wedge-shaped building at 300 Memorial Blvd, at Portage Avenue (Tues & Thurs-Sun 11am-5pm, Wed 11am-9pm; mid-June to Aug opens daily at 10am; $4, free on Wed; tel 786-6641, www.wag.mb.ca ), is the home of the largest public collection of Inuit art in the world, a decent selection of Gothic and Renaissance paintings and a reasonable assortment of modern European art, including works by Miro, Chagall and Henry Moore. The problem is that little of these collections is on display at any one time - much of the available space is taken up by offices while the main display area, on the third floor, is given over to temporary (and often dire) exhibitions of modern Canadian art. The mezzanine level, and often the third floor galleries, are devoted to the Inuits, each temporary display developing a particular theme - from the symbolic significance of different animals to the role of women sculptors in the isolated communities. The gallery also has an open-air sculpture court and a rooftop restaurant.
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