Plan your visit to CLAY, offering a seasonal menu of fresh local fare in one of the city's most beautiful spaces. Try our newly-launched spring menu today!
Ai Weiwei is one of the world’s most influential artists and human rights activists, and one of China’s most formidable critics. Ai Weiwei: Unbroken features a selection of the artist's most iconic ceramics, and marks the international debut of new work. See it before it closes on June 9!
SMASH: Nourish is a night of bold artwork, delicious cuisine, refreshing drinks, and invigorating experiences. The Gardiner Museum Young Patron Circle's annual art party sold out last year, so get your tickets early!
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!
Everyone can love clay! Become a Friend at one of the world’s great specialty museums and enjoy the benefits, including unlimited admission, invitations to exhibition previews and special events, discounts on lectures and clay classes, and more.
Lobby Display
In 1862, two intrepid tourists, Viscount Milton and Dr. Walter Cheadle, undertook a two-year expedition across Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Travelling by ship, steamboat, stage coach, train, horse, canoe, and raft, they faced deep snow, swarms of mosquitoes, swollen rivers, starvation, and grizzly bears.
Milton and Cheadle published an illustrated account of their epic trip, The North West Passage by Land. Two bone china dessert services were specially ordered from the Minton manufactory to commemorate their adventures: one made for Dr. Cheadle in 1865, and the other for Lord Milton in 1867. Twenty-two illustrations from the book, taken from Cheadle’s drawings or watercolours, served as inspiration for the hand-painted scenes on the services.
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of Canada’s confederation, thirteen pieces from Lord Milton’s magnificent service have been reassembled from public and private collections for this intimate lobby display.
Exhibition Programs & Events
September 22 – 26, 3 pm Screening: To Build a Fire French filmmaker Fx Goby’s animated adaptation of Jack London’s 1908 classic novel, To Build a Fire, depicts a trapper’s struggle for survival in the freezing temperatures of the Yukon in the late 1890s. Included with general admission. Learn more
Sunday September 23, 3 pm Artist Talk: FX Goby Join us for a moderated conversation with French filmmaker Fx Goby following a screening of his film To Build a Fire. Included with general admission. Learn more
Friday November 3, 4 pm Painted on Porcelain: A Canadian Odyssey Chief Curator Meredith Chilton recounts the story of Lord Milton and Dr. Cheadle’s incredible voyage and the history behind the Milton dessert services that commemorated their journey. Lear more
Image: Detail of an illustration from The North West Passage by Land