Mission of the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery

The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery exhibits contemporary material culture executed in the silica media - ceramics, glass, and enamel - for public edification and enjoyment. Through collection, research, documentation, interpretation, and dissemination, we celebrate achievements in silica media.

By varying attention from traditional forms to vanguard expressions; by ranging perspectives from individual to collective; and by altering scope from regional through national to international, we disclose multiple heritages and a plurality of directions implicit in today’s silica media.

Exhibitions, publications, tours, lectures, demonstrations, workshops, symposia and conferences are programmed to create a fertile environment for the silica arts. Our collection is intended to conserve that part of Canadian heritage germane to our mission and to outline the international context in which Canadian achievements occur. To encourage primary research and to stimulate scholarship in the area, we aim to serve as a specialized library, archive, and resource centre.

Collection at the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery

The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery was officially opened on June 18, 1993. As an institution, we are still in our infancy. Given our stage of growth, our collection is barely defined. It will take generations to accrue a collection that is comprehensive in scope, adequately reflecting our mandate. Gaps and omissions still outnumber representations of any kind.

Acquisitions for any museum are conditioned by many factors. Chief among those is the research of the professional staff. The staff surveys the field, assesses quality, meaning, and significance. They diagnose both gallery and artist’s direction, and determine acquisition strategy.

As their vision becomes known and shared with the visiting public, donors respond, using the gallery as a repository for material that is recognized as worthy of public care, attention, and expenditure.

One of the principles of museum collection is to purchase from the exhibitions curated in house. In that manner, a material record of our own institutional history is gradually developed. Happily, that is underway.

To date, acquisitions have been largely dependent on corporate and private gifts. Ultimately, like older established galleries, we hope to draw upon resources allocated from an endowment held for the sole purpose of acquisition.

Lately, members of the immediate geographic community are recognizing the gallery’s pledge to material culture as evidence of our leadership in reflecting our collective identity. The preservation of heritage is an opportunity to commemorate individuals, events, groups, and achievements through enlightened donation. Everything from wedding anniversaries, retirements, the holding of office, and even graduating classes can be honoured through a donation to our permanent collection.
Acquisition funds are always welcome, as are gifts that signal commitment to quality and a generosity in interpretive scope.

Collection in Context

Established in previous centuries, a class structure within the visual arts held that art should be divided into the so-called fine art and the presumed lesser or decorative arts & crafts. This hierarchy has provided an unfortunate legacy, for out of that prejudice, significant artists and important works have been relegated to obscurity. This gallery exists to correct that bias.

We now know that clay, glass, and enamel constitute viable media capable of major cultural expression - intellectual, popular, and functional. We also know that Canada boasts silica media artists of international stature whose achievements remain unchronicled at home despite decades of committed production. As a consequence, this gallery bears the responsibility of dealing with a “collection deficit”, to counter the neglect of former generations.

Also, we focus on things that are normally transparent to their purpose. Most objects on view here do not belong to the high intellectual plane, the exceptional act, or the heroic individual of great political significance. They do not support epic narratives, or world dramas in the grand sweep of history. They are not intended to provoke social criticality.

Many objects seen here partake of the routines of daily life. Historically, they have been trivialized and feminized, but we now live in more egalitarian times. Some things here speak of the family table, of basic creaturely acts of eating and drinking, of secure and nurturing domestic space, of the everyday routine. They speak of levels of existence where events are quiet, small- scaled and intimate. Most of all, as functioning objects, they speak of health. Their use affirms our health, and all the values associated with it.

Through our collection, we wish to celebrate those artists who have forwarded their chosen art forms. We hope to be able to trace the trajectory of their careers in depth. We also intend to encourage younger innovative talents who seem to be the leading spokespeople of their own generation.

In our collection, we want to represent regional trends, which vary from coast to coast, with the aim of being capable of fostering living traditions. This will allow us to convey the basic narratives of silica arts histories that adequately reflect the Canadian reality of a community of communities.

Glenn Allison,
Director