Toronto’s Gardiner Museum opens first-ever gallery of Indigenous ceramics

A Canadian museum’s reopening features a new, first-ever gallery of Indigenous ceramics, highlighting traditions of the land where the site is located. 

Toronto’s Gardiner Museum features pottery from the Woodland and Great Lakes region in a gallery designed by architect Chris Cornelius, who is Oneida, and curated by Franchesca Hebert-Spence, who is Anishinaabe Sagkeeng First Nation. Hebert-Spence also serves as the museum’s inaugural curator of Indigenous ceramics. 

“The piece is called yelákhwaˀ  (container – “one uses it to be in”) in the Oneida language,” Cornelius says. “As a Haudenosaunee designer, I am using language to connect the physical object with the land. My intention was to create a vessel that is part of the larger museum experience but also acts as a container to present the Indigenous ceramics within it. These belongings are not archaeological artifacts of the past but a continuation of Indigenous knowledge and expression. It is my goal to be a good future ancestor. The designed objects I create, including this one, express a contemporary culture grounded in a timeless worldview.”

“yelákhwaˀ consists of a wooden frame that takes the shape of the vessel, and a copper mesh skin that acts as feathers,” Cornelius adds. “The transparent mesh conforms to the shape of the vessel’s body while revealing the contents within. The vessel contains a view of the sky via a video projection that compresses 24 hours into 20 minutes, changing the visitor’s experience each time they enter the space.”

For more information about the museum and the new gallery, click here.