We are temporarily closed in accordance with the Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health and the Government of Ontario. We are so grateful for the support of our community and look forward to welcoming you back as soon as possible.
Opening February 24, Shary Boyle: Outside the Palace of Me is a multi-sensory installation including drawings, ceramic sculpture, life-sized automatons, two-way mirrors, coin-operated sculpture, and an interactive score.
Join us online on February 1 at 1 pm for our annual Bell Lecture. Dr. Chih-En Chen, Lecturer of East Asian Art History at the University of Toronto, will discuss the little-known history of Qing trompe l'oeil porcelain. Get tickets!
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!
We need your support now more than ever! Help us continue to offer innovative and engaging exhibitions, programs, and community projects online, as well as plan for the future. Please consider making a donation today.
Renowned artist An Te Liu explores the space around things. Drawn at first to the burnished surfaces and anthropomorphic features of funerary ware found in the Gardiner’s Ancient Americas collection, Liu has transformed discarded Styrofoam packing from consumer goods into ceramic sculptures that evoke a multiplicity of references. Using remnants of the contemporary world, Liu conjures forms recalling iconic works of both the ancient and modern periods. While each sculpture bears the imprint of an object in use today, the ambiguity of their origin invites reflection upon our relationship to things, both utilitarian and artistic, old and new. As such, the nineteen works of MONO NO MA stand like fossils of an evolving, unconscious present.
In Japanese, mono is a word for ‘thing’, while ma means ‘space’ or ‘gap’. Brought together by the possessive term ‘no’, they describe a form that is at once plenitude and void. Literally translated as ‘space of the thing’, MONO NO MA oscillates between memory and loss, the familiar and the enigmatic, thing and no-thing.
Exhibition Programs & Events
Friday September 6, 6 – 10 pm Opening Party Tickets: $50
Presenting Sponsors: Gerald Sheff And Shanitha Kachan