See Paul McCartney at the Art Gallery of Ontario

Before the much-anticipated Paul McCartney film — in which Paul Mescal sports a dashing bowl cut — hits cinemas, there’s a legacy to see.

“Paul McCartney: Eyes of the Storm” is now on-view at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Curated like a time capsule, the museum walls are covered in photographs and 1960s memorabilia. These were the salad days of the Beatles’ golden era; vintage newspaper clippings and press releases chronicle the band’s meteoric rise in real time. There’s even a letter from the president of the ‘Official Ontario Beatles Fan Club,’ dated 1964.

“It’s very much a show about memory,” says Flavia Frigeri, Curatorial and Collections Director at the National Portrait Gallery, London. “It’s a memory of an individual, but it’s also very much about collective memory.”

Speaking at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s media preview, Frigeri adds that as McCartney photographs others, “others were photographing him.” Inverting the conventional fan-idol relationship, McCartney’s unique perspective allows audiences to experience Beatlemania from the other side, positioning viewers at the centre of a frenzied and fan-crazed whirlwind.

To that end, a smattering of well-preserved columns feature fawning, breathless accounts of The Beatles’ concerts in Toronto and Montreal. “It took a flying wedge of helmeted traffic police to get the four singers into the lobby,” reads a 1964 issue of Toronto’s The Telegram. Elsewhere, one pithy press release declares: “BEATLEMANIA! INVADES CANADA.”

“You’ll see that Paul was influenced, consciously or not, by the visual culture of the time,” explained Jim Shedden, Curator, Special Projects and Director, Publishing, at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Documentary journalism and New Wave filmmakers inspired McCartney’s brand of non-fiction photography. In this respect, “Eyes of the Storm” draws parallels with other Beatles projects of the era; 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night — the band’s feature film debut, directed by Richard Lester — borrows techniques from the French New Wave.

With the exhibition, McCartney “isn’t claiming to be a master photographer,” Shedden adds. “Just someone who was in the right place at the right time.” That said, he says the National Portrait Gallery found “Eyes of the Storm” a compelling inclusion nonetheless; its images turn back the clock to the early years of celebrity culture. The exhibition explores fame as a physical phenomenon — something to experience. It’s a striking contrast to the present state of affairs, in which “fame” is determined by algorithms and flattened into metrics. McCartney’s time capsule is earnest and embodied: fans are immortalized through candid black-and-white photographs and awestruck letters.

Guided by both geography and chronology, the exhibition hops from Liverpool to London to Paris before crossing the Atlantic to reach New York, Washington, and Miami. A collection of audio recordings enhance select works from the exhibition, offering fans full immersion.

“Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm” is on-view for Members and Annual Passholders from February 27th to March 22nd, 2026. Public access runs from March 24th to June 7th, 2026.

FEATURE IMAGE: PAUL MCCARTNEY, JOHN LENNON, PARIS , JANUARY 1964 © 1964 PAUL MCCARTNEY UNDER EXCLUSIVE LICENSE TO MPL ARCHIVE LLP.

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO.