In 1984, for its first major exhibition of photography, the AGO relied on loans from local collectors. In a jubilant reversal, on the occasion of the department’s 25th anniversary, the museum presents this exhibition drawn from the rich collection the AGO has since built, featuring artworks chosen by the community that has helped it flourish.

In a departure from traditional curatorial models, Collective Visions: Celebrating 25 Years of Photography is shaped by more than 80 artists, collectors, donors, curators, community leaders, and scholars, beginning with a selection by Curator Emeritus Maia-Mari Sutnik. Structured as an “exquisite corpse”—the collaborative game popularized by the Surrealists in the 1920s—each participant selects a photograph in response to the previous choice. Unfolding image by image, the exhibition reveals a web of relationships, sensibilities, and perspectives, offering a living portrait of photography’s evolving place in Toronto’s cultural landscape.

Organized by Sophie Hackett, the AGO’s Curator of Photography, Collective Visions: Celebrating 25 Years of Photography aims to highlight the breadth of the AGO’s photography collection, representing a diverse range of artists, artistic genres and approaches, subject matter, and materials. Accompanied by responses from the participants, the works on view offer a rich and varied perspective on the medium of photography.

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Images

CONDITIONS OF USE:

Reproductions must be accompanied by the name of the artist, the title and date of work, the owner credit line, the copyright holder and photo credit. Reproductions must not be cropped, overprinted, tinted or subject to any form of derogatory treatment without the prior approval of the copyright owner.

For high-resolution, print quality images, please get in touch with media@ago.ca.

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A sweeping tribute to David Blackwood’s extraordinary printmaking legacy, where ice, sea, and story capture Newfoundland and Atlantic Canada with quiet power and unforgettable beauty.

One of Canada’s best-known printmakers, David Blackwood (1941–2022) put onto paper an enduring vision of Newfoundland. Born and raised on Bonavista Bay, his hauntingly beautiful images—suffused with struggle and myth—are drawn from childhood memories, dreams, superstitions, legends, and oral traditions.

Tracing Blackwood’s career from his first days as an art student at the Ontario College of Art to his final drawing, this expansive retrospective brings together more than 80 drawings and prints, alongside proofs, copperplates, and archival materials. Thanks to the generosity of the artist and his family, the AGO is home to Blackwood’s archives, and the largest collection of his work in the world. Curated by Alexa Greist, Curator & R. Fraser Elliott Chair, Prints and Drawings at the AGO, this exhibition aims to reveal the creative evolution of a beloved Canadian artist.

Organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario.

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Images

CONDITIONS OF USE:

Reproductions must be accompanied by the name of the artist, the title and date of work, the owner credit line, the copyright holder and photo credit. Reproductions must not be cropped, overprinted, tinted or subject to any form of derogatory treatment without the prior approval of the copyright owner.

For high-resolution, print quality images, please get in touch with media@ago.ca.

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Inspired by Baroque paintings, sculptures, and drawings at the AGO, in her first solo museum exhibition, American artist Jesse Mockrin radically re-envisions familiar historical subjects—Bathsheba, Solomon, and Daphne among them—through her own contemporary, feminist lens. Urgent and subversive, Mockrin’s closely cropped compositions reveal the unsettling and uncanny dramas buried in the art historical canon.  Curated by Adam Harris Levine, the AGO’s Associate Curator of European Art, this exhibition will feature more than 12 new large-scale paintings and works on paper, installed alongside paintings, drawings, and sculptures from the AGO’s European Collection.  

The exhibition is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario. 
The AGO wishes to recognize the support of James Cohan Gallery, New York. 

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Images

CONDITIONS OF USE:

Reproductions must be accompanied by the name of the artist, the title and date of work, the owner credit line, the copyright holder and photo credit. Reproductions must not be cropped, overprinted, tinted or subject to any form of derogatory treatment without the prior approval of the copyright owner.

For high-resolution, print quality images, please get in touch with media@ago.ca.

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Radical. Playful. Iconic. During the 60s, 70s and 80s, Joyce Wieland’s humorous and biting artistry helped give shape to this country’s changing ideas about gender, nationhood and ecology. An artist of great influence, whose work included textiles, collage, print, drawing and film, her legacy lives in the works of subsequent generations.

In this ambitious retrospective, the first since 1987, more than five decades of artistic output come together to highlight the breadth and originality of her practice and to position her as a key figure in 20^th century art and film. In addition to situating Wieland’s work in its artistic, social and political context, the exhibition will highlight the many ways she anticipated current debates about feminism, social equity and ecology.

The exhibition is curated by Georgiana Uhlyarik, Fredrik S. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art, AGO and Anne Grace, Curator of Modern Art, MMFA.

Joyce Wieland: Heart On is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

PDF of Exhibition Catalogue available upon request at wendy.so@ago.ca

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Images

CONDITIONS OF USE:

Reproductions must be accompanied by the name of the artist, the title and date of work, the owner credit line, the copyright holder and photo credit. Reproductions must not be cropped, overprinted, tinted or subject to any form of derogatory treatment without the prior approval of the copyright owner.

For high-resolution, print quality images, please get in touch with media@ago.ca.

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Moments in Modernism highlights the diversity and high quality of the AGO’s modern art collection, which has been built over time by generations of museum curators and patrons. 

This installation will show collection strengths from artistic movements such as Pop Art, Abstraction, Realism, and Minimalism.  An international approach in artistic styles will be presented, including a body of work from the AGO holdings by Brazilian artists, recognizing the global nature of modernism. A selection of contemporary works that respond to modernist movements will also be shown. 

Many of the artists, including Andy Warhol, Helen Frankenthaler, Jules Olitski, Gerhard Richter, and Mark Rothko are well known while others are still yet to be broadly recognized such as Tomie Ohtake, Rubem Valentim, Gene Davis and Kazuo Nakamura. A particular focus will be Canadian artists including Alex Colville, Rita Letendre, Jack Bush, Agnes Martin, Guido Molinari and Norval Morrisseau.

Moments in Modernism features artworks that will form the cornerstone for the expansion of the new Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery, starting construction in 2024.  The new building is being designed by architects Diamond Schmitt, Selldorf Architects and Two Row Architect to showcase the AGO’s growing collection of modern and contemporary art.

This exhibition is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario.

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Press Release

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Images

CONDITIONS OF USE:

Reproductions must be accompanied by the name of the artist, the title and date of work, the owner credit line, the copyright holder and photo credit. Reproductions must not be cropped, overprinted, tinted or subject to any form of derogatory treatment without the prior approval of the copyright owner.

For high-resolution, print quality images, please get in touch with media@ago.ca.

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Meet Couch Monster: Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch’ill, a bold new sculpture by acclaimed contemporary artist Brian Jungen. This work is the museum’s first ever public art commission, and will be situated at the corner of Dundas and McCaul Streets – the former setting for Henry Moore’s Large Two Forms (1966–1969).  

Jungen is renowned for his artworks made of repurposed consumer goods and modelled this work from second-hand leather furniture – the pieces of which are fully visible. The sculpture measures five and a half meters long, and is located adjacent to the AGO. A monument to creative form and engineering, this sculpture is his first large-scale work in bronze.

Intrigued by the tragic story of Jumbo, a captive circus elephant who made international headlines when it was killed by a train in St. Thomas, Ontario, in 1885, Jungen is deeply concerned with the terrible price all living things pay when forced to perform for others. That concern is embedded in the title of the work.

Jungen is a British Columbia-based artist of European and Indigenous heritage (Dane-zaa) whose extensive body of work engages with both Indigenous materials and traditions, Western art history and popular culture. 

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Press Release

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Images

CONDITIONS OF USE:

Reproductions must be accompanied by the name of the artist, the title and date of work, the owner credit line, the copyright holder and photo credit. Reproductions must not be cropped, overprinted, tinted or subject to any form of derogatory treatment without the prior approval of the copyright owner.

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Additional Materials