We've reopened with modified summer hours and free admission on weekends! There's plenty of space to reconnect and amazing art to discover in all corners of the Museum. Please read our new health and safety policies before your visit.
From sticky to crusty, pliable to powdery, and shaped to shapeless, clay’s ability to transform in real time is prompting a new generation of artists to explore the possibilities of this ancient material. RAW features new work by four artists who are pushing boundaries with unfired clay: Cassils, Magdolene Dykstra, Azza El Siddique, and Linda Swanson. See it now!
We're excited to introduce Clay Date, a new online art fundraiser in support of the Gardiner Museum and inspired by the special exhibition RAW. Presented by the Young Patron Circle's SMASH Committee, Clay Date will virtually unite a community of art enthusiasts and cultural philanthropists for an evening with artist Habiba El-Sayed.
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!
As we begin to welcome visitors back to the Gardiner, we need your support to continue offering innovative and engaging exhibitions, programs, and community projects on site and online. Make a donation and help us build community with clay.
Part of the Community Arts Space: Art is Change
FREE REGISTRATION
Join us for an artist presentation by Aanchal Malhotra, as part of August Fröhl’s Portable Stories programming.
Aanchal Malhotra will present “Remnants of a Separation”, an Oral History archive focusing on material memory. It is the first and only material study of the Partition of India, taking into consideration those objects that refugees brought with them when they migrated across the border, those objects that were left behind in houses and lastly, those objects that were lost in the midst of the journey of migration. Excerpts from the archive will be published as a book by Harpers Collins in August 2017.
About August Fröhls
The August Fröhls collective (led by artists/curators Aman Sandhu and Swapnaa Tamhane) will invite artists and creative practitioners to engage with local forms of storytelling, teaching, object histories, and music, within a site-specific installation on the plaza inspired by the portable classroom.
For artists/curators August Fröhls (Aman Sandhu and Swapnaa Tamhane), a significant amount of their early education in the Greater Toronto Area (specifically Scarborough and Markham) was spent in portable classrooms. Sandhu and Tamhane explore their speculative hypothesis that the presence of portable classrooms at Canadian schools could be viewed in parallel to the influx of immigrants into the Canadian landscape.
Originally intended as temporary space solutions, portable classrooms eventually became permanent infrastructure, set in place to provide extra room for a population growth that the main buildings could not have anticipated. Propositioning the portable as a space for peripheral pedagogy and histories, August Fröhls will create a site-specific outdoor installation harkening to the recognizable materials of the portable structure, and present a series of events that elicit lesser-known histories. Furthermore, operating from a belief that improvisation is a strong catalyst for the unearthing of third-space, collaged histories, improvisation as related to forms of pedagogy, storytelling, and history of objects will be explored throughout the duration of Portable Stories.
About the Speaker
Aanchal Malhotra is an artist and oral historian, working with memory and material culture. She received a BFA in Traditional Printmaking and Art History at the Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto, and a MFA in Studio Art from Concordia University, Montréal. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, US, UK and India. She is the co-founder of the Museum of Material Memory, a digital repository of material culture of the Indian subcontinent, tracing family histories and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectibles and objects of antiquity. She can also be found at her photoblog, The Hiatus Project. She currently lives in New Delhi.
About the Community Arts Space: Art is Change
The Gardiner Museum’s unique history and identity is rooted in the city, but its future is increasingly shaped by those beyond the core cultural corridor. As space increasingly becomes a premium downtown, the Gardiner has collaborated with six cultural and community partners to consider how institutional outreach can be re-shaped by local artists, curators, and architects. Looking to the rapid high-rise developments happening within the Museum’s own Yorkville neighbourhood, the projects in Art is Change consider how the city’s unique and varied local histories of art and social activism can be re-mapped for the future. Learn more