The Burnaby Art Gallery is located in Fairacres Mansion,[4] which was designed by Robert Percival Sterling Twizell[5] (1875-1964).

The original grounds included a garage and horse stables, an aviary, gazebo and pergola, lagoons, strawberry fields, greenhouses, a steam plant and a gardener's cottage.

In the former billiards room and parlour, a grand oak mantelpiece, hand-carved by George Selkirk Gibson, bears a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

[12] The Burnaby Art Gallery manages a collection of over 6,500 works on paper, primarily created by Canadian artists.

Highlights include substantial holdings by Anna Wong, Ernest Stephen Lumsden, Jack Shadbolt, Takao Tanabe, Susan Point, Gordon A. Smith, BC Binning, Roy Henry Vickers, Laurence Hyde, Gathie Falk, Sylvia Tait, Ann Kipling, and Alistair Bell.