Join us for a delicious three-course lunch while enjoying one of the best views in the city. Try our famous CLAY burger, ricotta gnudi, and more inspired local fare.
Join us for a full summer of free community programming inspired by the transformative power of clay. Four public projects explore how justice and pleasure can co-exist as counterpoints to calling out, gaslighting, and exhaustion. Register for free talks, clay workshops, and more!
There's still time to register for our popular clay camps, now with earlier start times, art-filled field trips, and fresh new themes. Sign up now for a week of hands-on creativity!
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.
This focus exhibition documents the rise of the faience industry in 17th and 18th-century France. Appreciated at all levels of society, faience (tin-glaze earthenware) provided a less costly, yet still highly refined and elegant alternative to porcelain.
Featuring approximately 40 objects for everyday use and ornamental wares, this exhibition surveys the production of the foremost faience centres, including Nevers, Rouen, Marseille, Moustiers and Strasbourg. The selection will offer insights into the social life and customs of the time, while reflecting the assimilation of technological advances and aesthetic influences that converged into France; from the initial introduction of the medium by Italian potters, to the diffusion of stylistic models from the Netherlands and the impact of cultural contacts with Asia.
The pieces featured in this exhibition were recently donated to the Gardiner Museum by Pierre Karch and Mariel O’Neill-Karch, and now constitute one of the rare collections of French faience in a public institution in North America.