The Gardiner is thrilled to announce the launch of CLAY, an original in-house restaurant offering seasonal menus of fresh, local fare in collaboration with The Food Dudes.
The Gardiner has reunited for the first time more than 350 objects from Sir William Van Horne’s exceptional collection of Japanese pottery alongside archival materials and stunning watercolours. See it now!
Join us for family-friendly craft activities throughout the holiday season including festive ornament-making, gingerbread cookie decorating, clay experimentation, and more.
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.
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.