This solo exhibition highlights a recent body of work by the leading Toronto-based conceptual artist Derek Sullivan. The works on display were inspired by Sullivan’s twelve-month site-study of Shift, a landart work by the American sculptor Richard Serra long-hidden in a field in King, Ontario.
The recent digitization of the Kinngait Drawings Archive—90,000 works strong and held by the McMichael for more than three decades—has allowed unprecedented curatorial access to the origins of this now world-renowned graphic tradition.
In June 2024, Toronto-based artist Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka (b. 1988) undertook an artist residency in the historic Tom Thomson Shack at the McMichael. The resulting project, Final Gasp of the Nervous System, responds to the natural environment and evokes personal and collective resilience in response to mental health struggles and the looming climate crisis.
John Scott: Firestorm presents the work of the late Canadian artist John Scott (1950–2022), gathering paintings, drawings, and sculptures made by Scott from the 1980s through the 2010s.
Among the great treasures of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection is a group of 54 jewel-like miniatures by the artist Clarence Gagnon.
Presenting recent sculptures by Anishinaabe/French artist Caroline Monnet, Pizandawatc explores language reclamation, ancestral memory, and intergenerational transmission. The title, meaning “the one who listens,” honours Monnet’s great‑grandmother and reflects a receptive way of being central to her practice. This version is 49 words, keeping it under 50 while preserving the key themes. Would you like me to also craft a shorter, 30‑word promotional blurb for visitor‑facing materials?
Jackson’s Wars: A.Y. Jackson before the Group of Seven explores rarely seen works from his travels in Europe and rural Canada, including powerful First World War battlefield paintings, offering a fresh perspective on the legacy of one of Canada’s most significant artists.
Highlighting a recent gift from Salah Bachir and Jacob Yerex, this exhibition pairs Betty Goodwin with David Altmejd. Both artists explore memory, loss, and life’s ephemerality through inventive materials and imagery, with works spanning Goodwin’s career and Altmejd’s major 2007 sculpture.
Bertram Brooker: When We Awake!. Bertram Brooker.
People of the Watershed: Photographs by John Macfie includes more than 100 photographs taken by John Macfie (1925–2018), a settler trapline manager who worked in Northern Ontario in the 1950s and 1960s.
Ghosts of Canoe Lake: New Work by Marcel Dzama. Marcel Dzama.
Moridja Kitenge Banza: Topographies. Moridja Kitenge Banza.
