We've reopened exclusively to Gardiner Friends & Get Acquainted cardholders, and we'll reopen to the public with two days of free admission on July 11 and 12. Regular admission rates resume on July 13. We can't wait to welcome you back! Please read our new health and safety policies before you 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. It reopens to the public on July 11!
We're posting family-friendly art activities inspired by our collection and the endless possibilities of clay. Visit our Family Day page for weekly crafts, colouring pages, and more fun art projects that you can enjoy at home.
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.
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.