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.
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