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
Richly furnished and infused with exotic scents, the lady’s boudoir held one of the rituals that most eloquently typified eighteenth-century refinement: the toilette. The toilette involved the dressing and accessorizing of hair and wigs, the application of make-up and patches, and the final stages of dressing, all in the company of friends, family members, and servants. Punctuated with light meals, conversation, and other activities, the toilette unfolded over several hours every morning. The lady of fashion rarely appeared in public before noon.
This display visualizes the refined atmosphere of the boudoir along with the beauty and social rituals of the toilette. Objects are both functional and decorative, and highlight the importance of porcelain in the consumption of some of the most fashionable and luxurious products of the time, including cosmetics, perfume, and snuff.