A New Chapter for the Gardiner

Backed by a record-setting gift, the Gardiner Museum’s $15.5-million transformation blends heritage with innovation—putting Indigenous voices and hands-on creativity at its core.

Writer Sallie Lewis

Inside Toronto’s Gardiner Museum, a river of glass runs through the newly transformed ground floor. Fresh off the venue’s 40th anniversary, the $15.5-million renovation project led by Montgomery Sisam Architects and Andrew Jones Design includes a wholly reimagined layout, a fully equipped makerspace, and the city’s first-ever gallery for Indigenous ceramics.

Snaking through the 9,000-square-foot ground floor, a wall of undulating glass gives guests a window into the new ceramics studio and community learning centre. “We love thinking of the museum as a community living room,” says Sequoia Miller, chief curator and deputy director at the Gardiner Museum. “In a more particular way, we think of the new community learning centre as a third space—not work, not home—that can hold complex conversations, speculation, and learning.”

Photograph by George Pimentel

Anchoring the permanent collection is the gallery for Indigenous ceramics. The design—with its dramatic wood frame skinned in copper mesh feathers—was conceived by the Haudenosaunee designer Chris Cornelius of Studio:Indigenous and developed in partnership with Indigenous communities, with the support of the museum’s Indigenous Advisory Circle, and the guidance of Franchesca Hebert-Spence, curator of Indigenous ceramics. Works centred on the pottery traditions of the Woodland and Great Lakes region sit beneath an oculus projecting a 20-minute video of the sky time lapsed over 24 hours. “I wanted to create a space that was unique from the rest of the museum,” Cornelius explains. “The projection in the oculus is a visual presentation of the cycle of a day.… It may be a little different each time someone visits, and you may have a new appreciation for the pieces within.”

For Miller, the project’s completion is a cause for celebration not only for the city of Toronto and its Indigenous population but also for the greater community shaped by clay. “What’s most exciting is seeing all of the innovative ideas we have been exploring actually taking shape,” he says. “Centring Indigenous art, being more informal and welcoming, and drawing connections between our lives today and the works in our galleries are all part of how we have changed and will continue to change.”