The Gardiner Museum reopens after its biggest renovation in 20 years. Was it worth the $15 million?

Much of that is understandable. The cost of the ROM’s capital project is more than eight times that of the Gardiner’s. Its stakes are also higher: Everyone wants to know whether the acclaimed Canadian architect Siamak Hariri can fix the museum’s controversial Michael Lee-Chin Crystal. Or will this renovation merely be putting lipstick — albeit some very expensive, haute couture lipstick — on a very pampered pig? 

But the Gardiner’s revitalization, designed by Montgomery Sisam Architects and Andrew Jones Design, in collaboration with the Oneida architect Chris Cornelius of studio:Indigenous, is still notable, even if not entirely successful and worth the price tag. It’s the museum’s most significant renovation in two decades (the Gardiner expanded its gallery space and added a third floor to its 41-year-old modernist structure in 2006), and features the complete transformation to its entrance and ground floor gallery.

An embrace of curves

Before, the museum’s interior echoed its cubic exterior, designed by Keith Wagland. Sharp lines, intersecting at right angles, contrasted — and even accentuated — the ceramics on display. 

Now, however, the space echoes the art itself, with curved walls and rounded wood panelling that embrace visitors like a vase cradles its contents. 

The first thing you see after entering the museum’s double doors is a new commission by the Algonquin contemporary artist Nadia Myre, of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinaabeg First Nation. Composed of handmade ceramic beads and clay pipe stems that Myre gathered from along the River Thames, “A Line Through Time” bends with the concave wall at the Gardiner’s new entrance. Its colours, muted on one end, grow into a trichromatic burst of pastellike reds, blues and yellows. 

To the left of this entryway is the museum’s new ticketing area, a convex booth with fluted wooden panelling that riffs on Myre’s installation. 

Beside it is a small, yet brightly lit hall with displays for rotating exhibits. At the museum’s reopening earlier this month, this area was occupied with a selection of works by the Canadian artist Jeannot Blackburn, whose campy, neo-noire creations satirize the excess of Hollywood while also commenting on the tragedy of the AIDS crisis, which ultimately claimed Blackburn in 1996 at the age of 36. 

A reimagined first floor gallery

The centrepiece of the Gardiner’s renovation, however, is a reimagined first floor gallery, showcasing four permanent collections: works from Indigenous Latin America; ceramics by modern and contemporary artists; European pieces from the 15th to 18th centuries; and a diverse array of works from Indigenous artists in the Great Lakes region. 

That latter collection, curated by Franchesca Hebert-Spence, grounds the entire space. Some of those Indigenous works are housed within a round, copper vessel called “Yelákhwaʔ,” designed by Cornelius. It’s a gorgeous sculpture, warm and communal, resembling the base of a grand, hollowed out tree. 

Placing all four collections in one room makes for some thoughtful, cross-cultural interplay. I was struck, for instance, by how Karine Giboulo’s “Food Back” diorama, ingeniously transforming a reusable shopping bag into a food bank, and using it to highlight the issue of food insecurity in our communities, was in conversation with some English delftware across the room, with gluttonous inscriptions about feasting. 

Welcome updates — and some missteps

Aside from these permanent collections, the Gardiner’s renovation has also ushered in other welcome updates to its ground floor. The wood accents near the main entrance add warmth to what once a sleek but cold space. The addition of a visible storage display case, highlighting works that would’ve otherwise been kept away from public view, is also a winning idea, following in the footsteps of many other museums around the world that have embraced the concept. 

But this project has its fair share of missteps, too. The most glaring among them: the confusing and cluttered labels that accompany the pieces in the permanent collections. It shouldn’t be a scavenger hunt to pair an item on display with its label, yet that’s the case here. 

As well, for a museum dedicated to ceramics, an art form that is inherently tactile, the lack of built-in, interactive and multimedia elements in this gallery is surprising. This is the space that visitors first experience. It’s what informs their initial impression of the entire museum. But right now, even despite the refresh, the gallery’s displays still feel stuck in the past century.

These two issues can be easily fixed. And I’m hopeful they’ll be done; cosmetic changes after the fact are always inevitable as an organization settles into a new space. 

A renovation without a guiding purpose

Still, while elements of the Gardiner’s renovation are impressive, it doesn’t answer why this project was necessary in the first place. Frankly, the updates to the museum’s permanent collection, specifically centring the work of Indigenous artists, could’ve been achieved without a full-scale renovation to the entire ground floor. 

The museum’s critically acclaimed 2006 renovation also still feels like just yesterday. It was, and remains, one of the city’s great architectural projects of the mid-aughts. But while this recent renovation doesn’t necessary diminish the work from that previous project, it doesn’t improve on it either. To put it in ceramic terms, it’s like refiring an already perfect piece of glazed pottery, only to change some of its lines and curves.