Outdoors
Art is in our nature. Beyond the galleries, you can explore 100 acres of forested land in the Humber River Valley – from a ridgetop ‘wilderness garden,’ planted by the McMichaels to echo the northern forest beloved of the Group of Seven, to the heritage waterway important to indigenous peoples in this area.
Tom Thomson
Tom Thomson is often wrongly assumed to have been a member of the Group of Seven. He almost certainly would have been had he not died too soon.
Uprising: The Power of Mother Earth
Uprising: The Power of Mother Earth, co-produced by the Thunder Bay Art Gallery and Carleton University Art Gallery, is the first retrospective of Christi Belcourt’s work, and spans more than twenty-five years of her art-making career.
Early Days: Indigenous Art at the McMichael
Early Days will gather remarkable artworks together, and the stories that go with them, in an eight-month celebration of these powerful legacies. The show will also include recent acquisitions reflecting the diversity and vitality of Indigenous art in Canada today.
Denyse Thomasos: Odyssey
Denyse Thomasos (1964–2012) was a Trinidadian-Canadian artist whose epic paintings incorporate imagery from a range of sources, including Caribbean textiles, historic slave ships, industrial shipyards, graveyards, villages and maximum security prisons.
Jon Sasaki: Homage
Jon Sasaki: Homage is a suite of photographs depicting petri dishes with bloomed bacterial cultures derived from swabs of the palettes and easels used by members of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, objects held in the archives of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.
Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment
This major exhibition of Canadian women artists coincides with, and offers commentary on, the centenary celebration of the Group of Seven.
From Water to Water: A Way Through the Trees
Anishinaabe/Ojibwa artist Bonnie Devine has been engaged to create a site-specific mural installation and mentorship project this fall at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.
Elisapee Ishulutaq: My World
Elisapee Ishulutaq: My World July 1 – October 30, 2022 About the Exhibition This will be the first solo museum exhibition of works by the exceptional Inuit artist Elisapee Ishulutaq (1925–2018), focusing on her epic works on paper in pencil and oil stick. Her works immerse us in the experience of daily life in [...]
RBC Emerging Artist Residency: Jen Aitken
The Forest for the Trees Open until Monday October 10, 2022. From From June 9 through July 3, 2022, the McMichael welcomed Toronto-based artist Jen Aitken to the Tom Thomson Shack as part of the RBC Emerging Artist Residency at the McMichael. During the residency Aitken used the Thomson Shack as a studio [...]
Conversations Masterworks from the Collection
This selection of works from our permanent collection aims to convey something of its current breadth, taking particular pleasure in placing apparently disparate works in creative conversation with one another. Featuring works by Kenojuak Ashevak, Rebecca Belmore, Edward Burtynsky, Franklin Carmichael, Emily Carr, Kim Dorland, Sorel Etrog, Paterson Ewen, Lawren Harris, Prudence Heward, Gershon Iskowitz, A.Y. Jackson, Cornelius Krieghoff, Jean Paul Lemieux, Arthur Lismer, An Te Liu, Zachari Logan, Helen McNicoll, David Ruben Piqtoukun, David Milne, Michael Snow, Tom Thomson and others.
Meryl McMaster: Bloodline
Meryl McMaster: Bloodline February 4 - May 28, 2023 About the Exhibition The McMichael and Remai Modern are proud to present a survey exhibition of a remarkable Canadian artist whose pioneering large-scale photographic works reflect her mixed Plains Cree/Métis, Dutch and British ancestry. This exhibition looks back to McMaster’s past accomplishments and [...]
Ghosts of Canoe Lake: New Work by Marcel Dzama
Ghosts of Canoe Lake: New Work by Marcel Dzama December 9, 2023 – June 9, 2024 About the Exhibition Marcel Dzama's delicate and fantastical drawings made with ink, watercolour paint and root beer catapulted the Winnipeg-born artist to international fame in the late 1990s. Since then, [...]
Bertram Brooker: When We Awake!
This exhibition examines the career of Bertram Brooker (1888–1955), the first Canadian artist to exhibit abstract paintings, in 1927. Curated by Michael Parke-Taylor, the exhibition is the first comprehensive presentation of Brooker’s oeuvre in almost half a century, gathering his diverse work in painting, drawing, and sculpture and highlighting his activities as one of the country’s leading art critics and journalists. The exhibition emphasizes Brooker’s variety in style and subject matter, and includes lyrical abstractions, exacting realistic nudes, geometric cubist still-lifes, and surreal graphic illustrations. Bertram Brooker: When We Awake! offers a rare vantage point on a pivotal figure in Canadian cultural history.
The Subtle Body: Betty Goodwin and David Altmejd from the Collection of Salah Bachir and Jacob Yerex
Highlighting an important recent gift from Salah Bachir and Jacob Yerex, this exhibition pairs the work of the late Montreal artist Betty Goodwin (1923–2008) with contemporary artist David Altmejd (b. 1974). Both artists express a deep humanism through their artwork, relying on inventive use of materials and imagery to reflect on memory, loss and the ephemerality of life. The exhibition includes works by Goodwin from the 1950s through to the 2000s and a major sculptural work by Altmejd produced in 2007, the year he represented Canada at the Venice Biennale.