From acclaimed Canadian musician Melissa Auf der Maur comes a photographic love letter to the last analogue decade. As bass player for iconic ‘90s alternative rock bands Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins, Auf der Maur toured the world, documenting life backstage, onstage, and in the crowd, amassing a personal archive of more than 10,000 images. These intimate photographs celebrate the independent spirit of the ‘90s, offering an insider’s view of the decade before smartphones and digital recording. Presenting a selection of more than 200 photographs, the exhibition stands as a moving self-portrait of a young artist living through the ‘90s music scene, a time capsule of Generation X and a reference for future generations. The exhibition is co-curated by Sophie Hackett, AGO Curator of Photography and Jim Shedden, AGO Curator, Special Projects & Director, Publishing.  

Melissa Auf der Maur: My ‘90s Rock Photographs is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, and will be accompanied by a hardcover book, co-published by AGO and DelMonico/D.A.P. 

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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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From the AGO shop comes a limited-edition capsule collection featuring Dylan Cease’s painted love letter to Toronto, Eve of Toronto (2026). Launching August 25, 2026, at 10:30 a.m., in person and online at shop.ago.ca, the collection includes prints, postcards, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and totes. All proceeds from the AGO X Cease collection support the AGO’s charitable mission to enrich lives through art and learning, thanks to Dylan’s generous contribution. 

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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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From acclaimed American artist Dawoud Bey comes a meditation on the tenuous relationships between North American landscapes and Black diasporic experiences.

This installation features a selection of images from the artist’s three landscape-based projects: In This Here Place (2019), Stony the Road (2023), and Night Coming Tenderly, Black (2017). The centrepiece of this installation is 350,000 (2023): a two-channel video that reimagines the journey made by 350,000 enslaved Africans along the Richmond Slave Trail between 1830 and 1860. These works come to the AGO on loan from the Rennie Collection in Vancouver. 

For this presentation, as part of the 2026 Toronto Biennial of Art, Bey worked with Curator Allison Glenn to conceive of the installation as a site-specific work, reflecting on the core curatorial framework of rupture as a generative force. Presented in dialogue with African artworks and objects from the AGO’s Frum Collection, four additional sculptures were selected by Bey to be included in this presentation, visually and historically developing a call and response between West African histories in the United States and Canada and those held in Nigeria, Ghana, and the Kongo—between the arrival and the departure, and the historical rupture manifested by the Middle Passage. These four works continue the narrative which Bey charts with his monumental photographic works, visually representing the enduring dialogues between North America and Africa.

Dawoud Bey: Material Histories, Living Landscapes provides a space for contemplating the enduring legacies of history in the contemporary moment. Presented at the AGO, in partnership with the Toronto Biennial of Art 2026, this exhibition is curated by Allison Glenn, Curator of the 2026 Toronto Biennial of Art, and will be on view through spring 2027.

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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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Making its Canadian debut at the AGO, this sweeping overview of Impressionism illustrates the origins of the movement and its considerable impact on two successive generations of avant-garde painters. Drawn from the extensive holdings of the Dallas Museum of Art, the exhibition includes masterful works by Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Vincent van Gogh, Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Edvard Munch, and more.

The works on view spotlight a range of experimental artists in a chronological and thematic arrangement that highlights how their techniques and subjects set a new course for modern art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse from the Dallas Museum of Art is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and curated by Dr. Nicole R. Myers, the DMA’s Chief Curatorial and Research Officer and The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Senior Curator of European Art. The AGO presentation will be led by Dr. Caroline Shields, AGO Curator, European Art.

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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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Making his Canadian debut at the AGO, Diego Marcon’s cinematic vision draws on Hollywood musicals, horror films, melodrama, and slapstick, to present films both unsettling and tender. Incorporating CGI, prosthetics, and robotics, Marcon achieves an uncanny quality in his films: images that feel artificial, yet strangely alive. At the centre of this installation is Marcon’s newest work, Krapfen (2025). Set in a bedroom, the film describes a child tormented by four characters — a pair of gloves, a foulard, a pair of trousers, and a pullover — who insist that the child should eat an apricot jam krapfen (or German doughnut). Part musical, part neurotic carousel, the objects hector the child as they swirl around, in a choreographed dance, set to music composed by Federico Chiari. 

Diego Marcon is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario and The Vega Foundation. The exhibition is curated by John Zeppetelli, Guest Curator, and Julia Paoli, Director and Curator, at The Vega Foundation, with Kate Whiteway, Assistant Curator.

Diego Marcon’s Krapfen is co-commissioned and made possible by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Lafayette Anticipations, New Museum, the Renaissance Society, and The Vega Foundation with additional support from Sadie Coles HQ, London, and Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/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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Making his museum debut, Canadian artist Ranbir Sidhu brings his futuristic vision to the AGO with an exhibition of three new monumental sculptures. Sidhu’s strikingly contemporary large-scale works are technically audacious and culturally resonant monuments, that meld the past, present, and future into a singular, striking vision.

Blurring the line between form and ideas, industry and intuition, Sidhu seamlessly weaves Sikh history and iconography into a contemporary visual language. His ambitious sculptural works are exquisitely engineered in a variety of metals.

Ranbir Sidhu: No Limits is curated by Julian Cox, AGO Deputy Director and Chief Curator.

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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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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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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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