Like many of you, we have been closely following the developments of COVID-19. The Gardiner Museum is closed temporarily as of March 14, 2020. We will continue to take guidance from our public health officials regarding the duration of the closure and will post updates to our website and social media channels as they become available. We are grateful for your support and thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to navigate this challenging time. We look forward to welcoming you back to the Gardiner soon.
Our spring sessional classes and workshops scheduled for April and May have been cancelled. Refunds will be issued automatically.
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!
Support the Gardiner's mission to champion clay, build community, and promote arts education. All of our memberships include a full year of free admission to the Museum, as well as discounts at CLAY Restaurant and the Gardiner Shop, and start and at just $30!
Curated by Rachel Gotlieb and Michael Prokopow
This landmark exhibition explores more than seven decades of Nordic aesthetic influence on Canadian design. Examining the ways in which modern Scandinavian design was introduced to Canada and how its aesthetic principles and material forms were adopted and adapted by Canadians artisans and designers, True Nordic presents a comprehensive, critical survey of Canadian furniture, ceramics, textiles, metalwork, and glassware.
Scandinavian design initially reached Canada’s elite consumers and style-makers via museum and gallery exhibitions, showrooms, small retail shops and articles and advertisements in popular decorator magazines. However, it was the dynamic influx of émigré craftspeople from Scandinavia who both affirmed and vernacularized the aesthetic in Canada and who shaped profoundly the country’s design and craft movement from the 1930s onward. What was broadly known as “Danish modern” became synonymous with ideas about good design, and “comfortable and gracious living.”
Capitalizing on the market opportunities presented, Canadian manufacturers added Scandinavian design to their conservative repertoire of colonial and historicist offerings and called these lines, Helsinki, Stanvanger, Scanda and so on. The culminating section of the exhibition will ask why Scandinavian and Nordic aesthetics continue to resonate with so many contemporary Canadian designers and artisans at work today.
Featured artisans include: Carl Poul Petersen, Ernst and Alma Lorenzen, Janis Kravis, John Stene, Karen Bulow, Kjeld and Erica Deichmann, Lotte Bostlund, Thor Hansen, Rudolph Renzius, Sigrun Bulow-Hube, Ruth Gowdy McKinley, Niels Bendtsen, Sean Place, and Mjolk.
Exhibition Partner
Exhibition Supporters
Dr. Robert Buckingham Diana Reitberger Anonymous (In Honour of Wendy Russell and Rosemary Wells)
Publication Supporter
The McLean Foundation
Supported by
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.