Exhibitions
The Dailies: Front Pages & Frontispieces
Opening reception: Friday, May 31, 6:30 p.m. What “makes” the front page? The Dailies explores the history of headline news, the form and function of the “front page” in news making, and the use of photographs and illustrations to tell the story of a thousand words. This exhibition runs concurrently with "B&W and Read All Over".
Find out more »Art As Activism: Truth, Survivance, and Resilience
Image: Alex Jacobs-Blum, The Medicine Game Opening reception: Friday, August 2, 6 PM Guelph Museums was established in the 1960s to preserve and share this city’s local history. Since then, our founding story has been told through the narrative of the Canada Company. Founded by John Galt, who became its first Superintendent, the Canada Company is responsible for colonizing over two million acres of land on the shores of Lake Huron, now known as the Huron Tract. This version of our…
Find out more »VibraFusionLab: Bridging Practices in Accessibility, Art and Communications
Experience sound and vibration technologies through art installations by David Bobier, Lindsay Fisher, Marla Hlady, Ellen Moffat, Gordon Monahan, Alison O’Daniel, and Lynx Sainte-Marie. By making sound tangible through touch, this exhibition aims to change public perceptions of difference and disability. Presented in partnership with VibraFusionLab, an innovative centre for vibrotactile research and creative practice based in London, Ontario. Public Events: VibraFusionLab Opening Reception Friday, September 27, 6 p.m. Civic Museum | Free admission Remarks, performances and reception. All…
Find out more »Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario
Content warning: The exhibition Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario includes content that some visitors may find offensive and/or traumatizing. Guelph Museums aims to provide open spaces for the sharing and understanding of all histories and lived experiences. We ask that visitors help to create an atmosphere of mutual respect and sensitivity. Into the Light examines local histories and ongoing legacies of racial “betterment” thinking in Southern Ontario that de-humanized and disappeared those who did not fit…
Find out more »Every Child Matters
Acknowledging the legacy of Canada’s Residential School system and its impact on Indigenous communities, past, present and future. What is Residential School? The term “Residential School” refers to the education system that forced Indigenous children into mainstream “Canadian” ways of living. The practice removed Indigenous children from their families, languages, customs, and traditional teachings. There were 139 Indian residential schools funded and operated by the federal government. Opened in 1828 and located only 50 kilometres from Guelph, the Mohawk Institute…
Find out more »Rotary in Guelph 1920–2020: 100 Years of Service Above Self
Image: Rotarians of Guelph, 1921 The Beginning of Rotary in Guelph: On February 23, 1920, 25 local business leaders hosted a meeting to organize a Rotary Club in Guelph. Under the direction of Alex Stewart, the club held its Charter Night on April 9, 1920 at the Royal Canadian Café. The Rotary Club of Guelph has sponsored nine other Clubs in Guelph and the surrounding the region: Kitchener (1922), Orangeville (1936), Acton (1947), Drayton (1950), Georgetown (1955), Fergus (1966), Guelph…
Find out more »Guelph Circa 1999
Like a time capsule, visitors will discover Guelph of 20 years ago. Told through the stories of the people who spent time at The Bookshelf, a cultural hub in this city since 1973, the exhibition also features artifacts from the 1990s and early 2000s.
Find out more »Lay of the Land
You are here! This interactive exhibition will orient visitors in time and place through an installation of maps, spanning time immemorial to present day. Lay of the Land invites all visitors to understand our complex relationship to the land, past and present, and to the place that we now call Guelph. Cartography is the art, science, and technology of making maps, plans, charts, and globes. The earliest surviving map, drawn on a clay tablet found in the Middle East, dates…
Find out more »
