Like many of you, we have been closely following the developments of COVID-19. The Gardiner Museum is closed temporarily as of March 14, 2020. We will continue to take guidance from our public health officials regarding the duration of the closure and will post updates to our website and social media channels as they become available. We are grateful for your support and thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to navigate this challenging time. We look forward to welcoming you back to the Gardiner soon.
Our spring sessional classes and workshops scheduled for April and May have been cancelled. Refunds will be issued automatically.
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!
Support the Gardiner's mission to champion clay, build community, and promote arts education. All of our memberships include a full year of free admission to the Museum, as well as discounts at CLAY Restaurant and the Gardiner Shop, and start and at just $30!
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.