Photos

This small modern building is the home of a unique museum in Toronto, just across the street from the much larger and older Royal Ontario Museum. It was established in 1984 to display ceramic art, most of it donated by George and Helen Gardiner. The museum underwent a major renovation and reopened in its present form in 2006. The noted Canadian architects Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg (KPMB) made it a much admired museum. Most people would agree with Bruce Kuwabara who described their project with these words: “Architecture provides the physical environment in which an institution can succeed and flourish. With the Gardiner, we re-imagined something that was already very good and took it to a new level of growth and excellence. We gave this great small museum an intimate monumentality.”