The Gardiner Museum is open seven days a week. Explore our permanent collection, discover special exhibitions, get hands-on with clay in our studios, dine, shop, and more. We look forward to welcoming you!
Enter a world at once familiar and uncanny. The exhibition hall has been transformed into an immersive reimagining of Montreal-based artist Karine Giboulo's home. Brought to life by over 500 miniature polymer clay figures, this is no ordinary house. The figures tell stories that reflect our most urgent social issues, from the pandemic and climate crisis to food insecurity and housing instability. Get tickets!
A new season of clay classes is open for registration! Sign up for stoneware, hand building, wheel throwing, and special exhibition courses. Winter is the perfect time to stay warm in the studio and learn a new skill. 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!
Limited time offer! Purchase or renew a Gardiner Friendship before January 1, 2023 and receive a free Get Acquainted pass (valued at $30) to gift to the art lover of your choice. Become a Gardiner Friend today!
Lobby Display
Today, Japanese clay art is experiencing one of the richest and most diverse periods in its long history. Throughout 2018, three lobby displays, curated by Joan B. Mirviss, an authority on Japanese ceramics and a New York City gallery owner for 40 years, will feature the work of ground-breaking Japanese ceramists who stand on the world stage, boldly asserting their independence, creativity, and technical genius.
For centuries in Japan, women were excluded from the male-dominated landscape of ceramic arts, restricted from taking apprenticeships, making ceramic vessels, or even participating in the firing process. However, with the advent of university programs and professional ceramic schools throughout Japan in the postwar era, women have been able to move past these gender-specific boundaries. Today, Japanese female masters of clay are the equals of their male contemporaries, as luminaries and independent creative talents.
Japan Now: Female Masters showcases the brilliant work of some of the most celebrated contemporary female ceramists of Japan. With their own sensibilities and without ties to specific regional or familial ceramic traditions, these artists have raised their nation’s ceramic arts to an entirely new level.
January 12 – April 22 Form + Function
June 7 – September 2 Surface
September 7 – January 13 Female Masters
Header image: Fujikasa Satoko, Hiten; Seraphim, 2016. Stoneware with white slip glaze. 23 1/4 x 25 1/8 x 17 3/4 in. On loan from the Diana Reitberger Collection