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.
Ai Weiwei is one of the world’s most influential artists and human rights activists, and one of China’s most formidable critics. Ai Weiwei: Unbroken features a selection of the artist's most iconic ceramics, and marks the international debut of new work. Opens February 28!
Drawing from the Gardiner’s own collection and artist Ai Weiwei’s practice in traditional Chinese craft, Dr. Maris Boyd Gillette explores how Jingdezhen porcelain has inspired ceramists to create, copy, and counterfeit its glories.
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.
As Canada’s only museum dedicated to ceramic art, the Gardiner Museum plays an important role in the community, and is committed to providing everyone with access to its collections and programs.
The Gardiner offers programs and events that bring an increasingly diverse audience together allowing people of different backgrounds to meet and exchange ideas.
The Gardiner Museum believes that everyone can love clay. It is a uniquely accessible medium that inspires creativity through its malleable qualities. In our increasingly virtual world, people more than ever need the real of clay. Clay is a universal medium. It combines art with function, enabling those of all ages and backgrounds to appreciate art in a personal and intuitive way.
For over a decade, the Gardiner has been at the forefront of therapeutic art sessions for adults and children who have been victims of intimate violence. Working in partnership with service organizations, alongside leading art therapists and ceramists, the Museum has provided a safe, welcoming environment for children, young people and adults to explore their traumas and experience mutual recovery in a group setting.
Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic Expressive Arts Group
The Gardiner Museum Expressive Arts Group is for women survivors of child sexual abuse/incest, adult sexual assault, and intimate partner abuse. The women work with clay to produce a ceramic piece of art in reference to a common theme that is introduced in advance of their participation. Each year an exhibition of the artwork created is displayed to raise public awareness about violence against women in a sensitive, informed and compelling way.
Radius Children & Youth Services Expressive Arts Group
The Gardiner hosts a twelve week ceramic arts group for children and youth who have experienced interfamilial sexual abuse. The group combines elements of art therapy, mindfulness practice, ceramics, community development, education and social justice with a goal of breaking silence that has traditionally surrounded sexual abuse. It empowers children and youth to share their stories through the creation of ceramic sculptures while they heal and navigate through difficult experiences. The workshops culminate in an exhibition of artwork that is open for public viewing.
Toronto Community Hepatitis C Program
The project Recruiting Allies Through Clay: Artists and Communities Co-Creating Equitable Access to High Quality Hepatitis C Virus Care was created for a group of vulnerable people that is often pushed to the margins of society. Participants create a clay self-portrait on four clay tiles; two of their tiles will be contributed to a group wall mural and the remaining two they will keep. At the completion of the session, participants collaborate together to design an opening night art exhibit.
The Gardiner understands that clay can offer a creative experience like no other. By taking part in a clay class, each participant is engaging in a creative practice that unknowingly contributes to the feeling of social inclusion and mental well-being [1]. Clay is tactile, it is not precious or fragile in an unfired state; it allows for play and changes to be made at any part of the process, yet requires immense concentration and discipline. It is this required focus that can remove the inhibitions of those working with clay. Participants can easily continue to create while conversing with fellow classmates leading to greater socialization.
1 Dr. Elaine Argyle, “Creative Practice in a Group Setting,” Journal of Mental Health and Social Inclusion 19 (3), July 2015.
The Gardiner Museum participates in a number of access oriented programs to ensure the broadest possible audience has access to its collections, exhibitions and programs.
Clay on the Plaza
Each summer the Gardiner hosts children and young people from under-resourced neighbourhoods through our Clay on the Plaza program. The Museum provides a full-day experience at the Museum that includes an educational tour, lunch and a clay class on our plaza in front of the Museum. The Gardiner’s intimate size is the ideal environment to enthuse children and young people about museums and culture as they receive a more personalized experience throughout their visit.
Clay Classes on the Plaza
Schools & Community Access Fund
Each year the Gardiner welcomes 10,000 school children to its educational programs. With the guidance and encouragement of a ceramist and our educational staff team, children and young people from grades 1 through 12, work with clay in our custom-built clay studios. Each session has several curriculum links, and provides a tactile experience. The Gardiner’s Community Access Fund provides subsidies to schools and groups from under-resourced neighbourhoods that would otherwise be unable to visit the Museum.
Learn More
The Gardiner participates in several community events throughout the year to engage the broader public in the transformative qualities of working with clay. Our own public programming includes Family Days, which always provided in the lobby to engage all visitors in the tactile experience of making ceramics, as well as our drop-in clay classes and clay courses. The annual national initiative Culture Days provides an annual opportunity to reach a large number of visitors and engage them with clay.
The Gardiner Museum works with community and cultural partners to bring new groups and visitors to the Museum. Through ongoing partnerships and those formed for specific projects, the Gardiner promotes creativity, social interaction, and well-being. Our partners have included Soundstreams Canada, Human Rights Watch, imagineNATIVE film + media arts festival, The Next 36, Victoria College at the University of Toronto, Alliance Francaise, RPM.fm Indigenous Music Culture, Akin Projects, South Riverdale Community Health Centre, Crazy Dames, UnSpun Theatre, VIBE Arts, and many more.