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!
Lobby Display
Edmund de Waal is a renowned English potter and author, who for the past twenty-five years has been exploring rhythms in white porcelain. He uses Limoges porcelain clay with a small range of translucent glazes including a subtle, pale celadon which occasionally oxidizes, resulting in a creamy tone.
The lobby display, Rhythm in White, features a grouping of works from two Toronto private collections, including a series of de Waal’s famed “cargo” vessels, inspired by historical cargos of porcelain shipped in vast numbers to Europe from China and Japan, as well as “twin” covered jars, with subtle differences and distinct personalities, commissioned by the collectors to celebrate the birth of identical twins.
De Waal became a household name following the publication of his international best-seller The Hare with the Amber Eyes, a family memoir told through a collection of miniature Japanese carvings, and its follow up The White Road: A Journey into Obsession, an intimate glimpse into the artist’s lifelong passion for porcelain.
Born in Nottingham, England in 1964, Edmund de Waal is best known for his large-scale installations of white porcelain vessels. His work has been exhibition throughout the UK and internationally, including at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and most recently at the Kunsthaus Graz alongside Ai Weiwei. He’s won numerous literary awards including the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Costa Biography Award, and his work has been translated into over twenty-five languages. In 2011, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to art.