In accordance with the announcement by the provincial government, the Gardiner Museum has closed temporarily. The health and safety of our visitors, staff, and the wider community remains our top priority. We'll continue to provide you with engaging digital content to keep us connected while the galleries are closed.
During our temporary closure, we're posting exhibitions and selections from our collection online. Discover Inuit ceramics, Chinese and Japanese porcelain, pottery from the Ancient Americas, and more!
On Thursday April 29 at 1 pm, join us for a free online lecture with Professor Alison McQueen, who will discuss the significant contributions of women working at Sèvres in the first century of its history. The presentation will feature works from leading international porcelain collections and bring attention to the often-overlooked roles of women retouching glaze, laying down prints, and burnishing. Register now!
Every object in our permanent collection can be accessed through our eMuseum portal. Learn about individual collecting areas, like Italian Maiolica or Modern and Contemporary Ceramics, or search the full collection by keyword. You'll be amazed by what you discover!
With the Museum closed temporarily, we need your support to continue to offer innovative and engaging exhibitions, programs, and community projects online, as well as plan for the future. Please consider making a donation to help us build community with clay.
Amber Zuber (b. 1973) has a BA in History from McMaster University. She studied Ceramics at Sheridan College, School of Craft & Design (2010-2013), and completed a Summer Assistant Residency at Peters Valley Craft Centre in 2012. In her final year at Sheridan, she was honoured with two graduate exhibition awards for Best in Show: The Gardiner Museum Award (Ceramics) and The Ottenmiller Graduate Exhibition Award (Craft & Design). Since June 2013, she has been an artist-in-residence at Harbourfront Centre.
Artist Statement
My work engages with concepts of identity. Through the making of objects that elicit memory, whether experienced or imagined, my work is an investigation of the self and of our attachments. Interpreting my surroundings in order to re-examine and re-invent, My Canadian Landscape is a wood-fired series that looked to my city block as a muse— the visual identity of Toronto that lies in front, above and below me. The city manhole covers were my texture and the buildings my form. Using wood to fuel the kiln, the clay was deliberately left bare in order to allow the natural effects of the flame and ash to adorn the surfaces. I appreciate the mundane textures and forms of the everyday and these vessels serve as trace souvenirs of my immediate surroundings.