Home to the Art of Canada

Toronto artist Iris Häussler is one of a number of Canadian artists who have made the Tom Thomson Shack on the McMichael property their temporary summer workspace, among them Robert Houle, Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka, Jen Aitken, and Zachari Logan. Häussler’s complex project incorporated her research on the death of migrating birds though collisions with glass—a phenomenon that kills more than twenty million migrating birds in Canada annually.

The Anishinaabe artist and scholar Bonnie Devine won the 2024 Galeries Ontario Galleries (GOG) Award for Curatorial Writing for her lead essay, “On Looking and Reading,” in our landmark publication Early Days: Indigenous Art at the McMichael.

Last year at Art Toronto we acquired Aanzinaago (Caught in a Transformation) 01, 2024, by Native Art Department International (NADI), for the collection at the McMichael. NADI is a collaborative long-term project created and administered by the Ojibwe Anishinaabe performance artist, sculptor, and mixed-media artist Maria Hupfield (b. 1975) and the Chiricahua Apache and Mexican multimedia artist Jason Lujan (b. 1971).

Two Caribou, 2008–2009, by Kananginak Pootoogook (1935–2010), is a rich example of contemporary drawing from Kinngait (formerly Cape Dorset), Nunavut, depicting two bull caribou locked in battle, perhaps over a mate. Hooves fly and antlers clash, lending a sense of immediacy to the conflict.

Dream Meadow, 2023, is a textile-based sculpture made by the artist Anne Low (b. 1981) in her former studio on Denman Island in British Columbia. The work comprises a long skirt and pocketed apron with attached adornments. The striped textiles used to create the skirt and its lining were handwoven by the artist on a loom with hand-dyed wool and silk, using eighteenth- and nineteenth-century weaving techniques and historic patterns.

This fall, the McMichael is delighted to see Rajni Perera: Futures presented at the Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto Scarborough campus, the latest stop on a national tour showcasing the groundbreaking work of one of Canada’s most compelling contemporary artists.

Featuring 74 extraordinary works created between 1888 and 1937, Northern Lights unites visionary Canadian artists Emily Carr, Lawren S. Harris, and Tom Thomson with European masters such as Hilma af Klint and Edvard Munch.

Back in 2021, the McMichael teamed up with the Koerner Foundation and the acclaimed Canadian filmmaker David Hartman to create a series of short documentaries that pull back the curtain on the lives and practices of some of Canada’s most celebrated contemporary artists represented in the McMichael’s collection. Each film offers an intimate glimpse into their studios and landscapes, inviting us to listen as they share stories of creativity, process, and the inspirations that shape their work.

This spring, the McMichael opened Morrice in Venice—transporting visitors to the canals, piazzas, and winding streets of Venice through the eyes of one of Canada’s most accomplished modernists, James Wilson Morrice (1865–1924).

Acquired by the McMichael in 2014 through the generous support of the artist’s family in the United States, the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Cultural Property Export and Import Act, and the McMichael Canadian Art Foundation, the Lismer Archive reveal a more personal side of Lismer’s world.