Plan your visit to CLAY, offering a seasonal menu of fresh local fare in one of the city's most beautiful spaces. Try our newly-launched spring menu today!
See an extraordinary spectrum of contemporary works, including vessels, figurative sculpture, and abstract forms in The Diana Reitberger Collection, on display in our Modern and Contemporary Ceramics Gallery.
Our new kids clay camps now include earlier start times, art-filled field trips, and fresh new themes. Register now for a summer of creative hands-on fun!
The Gardiner Museum is among the few museums in the world focused on ceramics, and is one of the most important specialty museums internationally. It houses approximately 4,000 objects, including European porcelain, ceramics from the Ancient Americas, Chinese porcelain, Japanese porcelain, and contemporary ceramics. Search the collection online!
Everyone can love clay! Become a Friend at one of the world’s great specialty museums and enjoy the benefits, including unlimited admission, invitations to exhibition previews and special events, discounts on lectures and clay classes, and more.
The Gardiner Museum’s Mesoamerican objects come from the modern countries of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Belize. Many great civilizations and cities emerging in these regions along with intellectual accomplishments, such as the domestication of corn, hieroglyphic writing, and a precise calendar based on the observations of the heavens. Objects in this collection date from about 1500 BC to approximately AD 1521.
Cultures represented in the Museum’s collection include the Maya, Aztec, Zapotec, West Mexico, Teotihuacan, Mixtec, as well as many others.
The Mesoamerican objects in the Museum’s collection were part of the original gift of ceramics given by George and Helen Gardiner.
1. Plate with Hieroglyphic Text (detail), Maya Culture, Guatemala, Uaxactun area, early late classsic period, 550-650, Gift of George and Helen Gardiner, G83.1.120. Photographer: Toni Hafkenscheid
2. Plate with Hieroglyphic Text (detail), Maya Culture, Guatemala, Uaxactun area, early late classsic period, 550-650, Gift of George and Helen Gardiner, G83.1.120. Photographer: Toni Hafkenscheid
3. Escavada Black on White Bowl (detail), Ancestral Pueblo Culture, Southern Colorado Plateau, USA, 950-1300, Gift of Ulli and Carol Rath on behalf of the Rath family, G14.10.4
4. Parrot Effigy Bottle with Double Chambers (detail), Salinar Culture, Peru, North Coast, Late Early Horizon 500-300 BCE, Gift of George and Helen Gardiner, G83.1.159
5. Tetrapod Jaguar Effigy Vessel with Rattle Supports (detail), Costa Rica, Guanacaste, Nicoya Zone, Late Period VI 1200-1400, Gift of George and Helen Gardiner, G83.1.147. Photographer: Melissa Shimmerman