TORONTO - As a boy, George Gardiner collected toy soldiers and stamps. When he grew up, it was horses and art.
But it was only later in his life that the prominent Toronto financier and businessman turned his attention to ceramics. With his wife, Helen, he amassed a prodigious collection of ancient American pottery, yellow ground porcelain, 17th- and 18th-century English delftware, and Italian Renaissance majolica, among other treasures. In less than a decade the collection got so big they were stashing ceramics under the beds, and they knew they needed a plan. So in 1984, more than than 2,000 of their pieces became the foundation for the Gardiner Museum in downtown Toronto, said to be the only museum in North America devoted solely to ceramics.
The museum reopened last year after a $20 million expansion, and the revamped building has been hailed as one of the city's most compelling examples of new architecture. The Canadian firm of Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, with Kuwabara the design principal, created an elegant edifice in glass and stone, constructed as a series of cubes and platforms and infused with natural light. The building also houses a new restaurant presided over by renowned local chef Jamie Kennedy, and a gift shop that Vogue magazine named one of the three best in the city.
This is high praise, for Toronto is a city undergoing what its boosters like to call a cultural renaissance. Right across the street is Daniel Libeskind's dramatic expansion of the Royal Ontario Museum, and nearby is the ongoing transformation of the Art Gallery of Ontario, designed by Frank Gehry, who was born here.
The Gardiner has raised the profile of the art of ceramics within the visual arts. The collection spans many periods and styles including the ancient Americas, Chinese blue and white porcelain, Japanese porcelain, and modern contemporary ceramics, including vessels by Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso, and works by noted Canadian and New England artists. The museum mounts three special exhibitions a year. Past shows have featured Picasso's ceramics, teapots, and Chinese exported porcelain; a current show features the work of the German artist Gertraud Möhwald (1929-2002).
Gardiner, who died at 80 in 1997, started collecting ceramics in the late 1970s. He had had a legendary career, earning a master's in business administration at Harvard Business School, serving as chairman of the Toronto Stock Exchange, and founding Canada's first discount brokerage firm. He was a member of the committee that gained control of Maple Leaf Gardens, home of the National Hockey League Toronto Maple Leafs. He had an interest in Harlequin Books (which accounts for a collection in the museum of harlequin figures from the commedia dell'arte) and was part of the business group that brought Kentucky Fried Chicken to Canada.Continued...