We're delighted to announce that the Gardiner Museum will reopen to the public with two days of free admission on Saturday July 11 and Sunday July 12. From July 13 onward, we'll resume our regular hours and admission rates. It seems we've been gone so long—we miss you and can't wait to welcome you back! Please read about our new health and safety protocols before your visit.
During our temporary closure, we're posting exhibitions and selections from our collection online. Discover Inuit ceramics, Chinese and Japanese porcelain, pottery from the Ancient Americas, and more!
We're excited to present a new live series hosted by Chief Curator Sequoia Miller in which an artist will share three of their artworks and speak about them in connection to a larger theme. On Thursday July 9 at 1 pm, Azza El Siddique, a Sudanese-Canadian interdisciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation, painting, photography, and film, will discuss three of her artworks in the context of the theme “Absence”. Registration is free!
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!
We’re closed until further notice, but we’re planning for the day when we can again welcome visitors. We encourage you to make a gift to the Gardiner. This will be vital for when we reopen, and is the optimistic message we all need.
The Vase Project: Made in China, Landscape in Blue
Curated by Barbara Diduk, Charles A. Dana Professor of Art at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in collaboration with Zhao Yu, Assistant Professor at the Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China
The Vase Project celebrates the art of copying and the role of the usually anonymous artist in Jingdezhen. Working with 101 blank vases, the curators created a visual chain letter selecting factory workers and painters from independent workshops around the city to copy and hand‐paint a blue-and-white contemporary landscape based on their original sketch of the smoke stacks of Jingdezhen.
The project took place sequentially over a two year period: the first factory artist received the sketch which he/she copied on a blank vessel which was then fired and passed on to the next artist to copy on a new identical blank vase and so on.
The Vase Project exhibition reveals that even when working by rote or mimetically the anonymous artist’s individual brushstrokes contribute to a singular one-off aesthetic within mass‐production.
Go East: Canadians Celebrate China
Curated by Rachel Gotlieb
This exhibition explores the recent allure of China on Canadian ceramicists. In the past few years, numerous ceramic artists have attended residencies and exchanges in Fuping and Jingdezhen, replacing the tradition of visiting Japanese folk (Mingei) potteries, in search of authentic experiences.
The exhibition traces this new direction and how/if it has re-shaped ceramic practice in Canada. Themes include contemporary Western interpretations of Asian iconography, the relationship between the handmade and mass production and the endurance of blue-and-white (Qing Hua).
Go East features work by nine artists from across Canada that were made in China or inspired by their experience of living there. Artists participating in this exhibition are: Susan Collett, Jackson Li, Sin-ying Ho, Rory MacDonald, Sally Michener, Ann Mortimer, Paul Mathieu, Walter Ostrom and Diane Sullivan.
Exhibition Programs & Events
Tues October 23, 6:30 – 8 pm For the Emperor and for Export: A Survey of Seven Centuries of Blue-and-White Porcelain Production at Jingdezhen Presented with support from the Murray and Ann Bell Endowment Fund Christina Prescott-Walker of Sotheby’s New York, surveys seven centuries of Jingdezhen blue-and-white porcelain and the emergence of the Jiangxi Province city as the most significant centre of porcelain production in China. $15 General; $10 Members