Toronto–August 12, 2022

The Gardiner Museum

If you like ceramics, you have to go to the Gardiner Museum.

The museum isn’t particularly large, but the collection is really wonderful. This is one of the few museums where I found the descriptions of the exhibits to be worth reading. They’re really well written; they give you enough information to be interesting without loading you down with irrelevant details or fancy “artist statements.” See, for example, this description of a glazing technique.

Pre-Columbian Works

This is a modern work by the Z'otz* Collective.

Other Works

Here are photos from the rest of the museum, in no particular order. There are a few modern works among the older items.

Artist: Jean-Pierre Lafocque

Mexican Bauhaus Teapot (Peter Shire)

Doctor’s Bag (Marilyn Levine) - this is stoneware.

Drowning Roger Aksadjuak (Inuit artist)

Vessel that is Not a Vessel (Takuo Nakamura)

Rebellion at Coytepec (Carlomagno Pedro Martinez)

Mermaid Tree of Life (Carlos Soteno)

Close-up of preceding photo.

This is a room where visitors can make their own clay works.

Here are some of the smaller works of art.

And more artworks...

The teapot is an original; the mug is a forgery in the same style.

Miscellaneous

Artist: Shrif Bey

Art in Progress

On the third floor, the Z'otz* collective was painting a wall mural. I got there about two hours after they had started. There was also a table with black construction paper and scissors, where visitors could look at some of the sculptures in the room and use them as inspiration to cut out shapes, which the artists would use in the final work.