We're delighted to announce that the Gardiner Museum will reopen to the public with two days of free admission on Saturday July 11 and Sunday July 12. From July 13 onward, we'll resume our regular hours and admission rates. It seems we've been gone so long—we miss you and can't wait to welcome you back! Please read about our new health and safety protocols before your visit.
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!
We're excited to present a new live series hosted by Chief Curator Sequoia Miller in which an artist will share three of their artworks and speak about them in connection to a larger theme. On Thursday July 9 at 1 pm, Azza El Siddique, a Sudanese-Canadian interdisciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation, painting, photography, and film, will discuss three of her artworks in the context of the theme “Absence”. Registration is free!
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’re closed until further notice, but we’re planning for the day when we can again welcome visitors. We encourage you to make a gift to the Gardiner. This will be vital for when we reopen, and is the optimistic message we all need.
Betty Woodman (American , b. 1930) is among the most original and most important contemporary ceramic artists. Since the 1970s, she has produced a significant and distinctive body of work that explores the boundaries between ceramics, painting, and sculpture in exciting and innovative ways. Her work has been collected by major museums around the globe, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. In 2006, Woodman was given a full retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an honour rarely bestowed by that institution on living artists.
Betty Woodman: Places, Spaces & Things features a selection of Woodman’s painted ceramics and wall installations from the past 20 years of her career. The heart of the exhibition is a group of fifty porcelain vessels that were created by Woodman during multiple residencies at the Sevres Factory in France between 1987 and 2009. Inspired by historical examples, these porcelains feature expressively distorted forms and brightly painted surfaces that recall the work of modern masters like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. In addition to the Sèvres pieces, the exhibition also includes a number of large-scale painted ceramic vessels and several of Woodman’s monumental canvas and ceramic painting installations.
Places, Spaces & Things is the first major exhibition of Woodman’s work in Canada. The exhibition is guest-curated for the Gardiner Museum by Patterson Sims, former director of the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, working in conjunction with the artist.