Event Details

The McMichael Canadian Art Collection offers its visitors a unique experience. From the art on its walls to the surrounding landscape, the McMichael provides an introduction to Canada’s art, art making and artists.

Renowned for collecting only Canadian art, the McMichael permanent collection consists of almost 6,000 artworks by Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven, their contemporaries, and First Nations, Métis, Inuit and other artists who have made a contribution to the development of Canadian art.

The gallery welcomes on average 100,000 visitors annually. On average, 30,000 students and educators from more than 40 school boards and private schools visit the McMichael during the school year. In addition, the McMichael welcomes adults, families, and youth to programs and activities from lecture and film series to studio classes and summer art camps.

Designed in a modernist idiom, and built of fieldstone and hand-hewn logs, the McMichael houses thirteen exhibition galleries where floor-to-ceiling windows enable visitors to enjoy views of the densely wooded Humber River Valley. Beyond the galleries the McMichael provides 100 acres of forested land, from a ridgetop ‘wilderness garden,’ planted by the McMichaels to echo the northern forest beloved of the Group of Seven, to the heritage waterway important to Aboriginal peoples.

Through a network of outdoor paths and hiking trails, visitors can explore the newly installed Sculpture Garden as well as the unique McMichael Cemetery where six Group of Seven members and gallery founders Robert and Signe McMichael have been laid to rest.

The McMichael displays a wide range of exhibitions each year, curated from the collections or borrowed from other major institutions. The McMichael is a Category A gallery, and adheres to the highest standards of environmental and security norms for the protection of the works of art on display.

This exhibition examines the dialogue which took place between the founding painters of modern Canadian art, James Wilson Morrice (1865-1924) and John Lyman (1886-1967), with Henri Matisse (1869-1954). This major exhibition of Canadian art will encompass the entire upper floor of the McMichael and will feature 130 artworks, as well as historical artifacts relating to the three artists. The show will include paintings from public and private collections, including a handful of rare Matisse works. The exhibition will be coming from the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec.

The exhibition will be accompanied by ancillary programming, including (1) “Parcours Croisés” a four-day Festival with an Arabian Nights concert, study day for scholars, curators talks on October 2 to 5, 2014; (2) a lecture series: (3) family and children programming: (4) school and educational programs; and (5) special events, such as (i) guided tours; and (ii) afternoon teas.