Tom Thomson’s Flowers paintings, are photographed at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in 2023. The ROM exhibition will include paintings by Thomson, the Group of Seven and leading Canadian women artists.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
For the next two years, visitors will be able to reach the McMichael Canadian Art Collection on the Bloor and University subway lines in Toronto.
The art gallery in bucolic Kleinburg, Ont., is currently closed for a three-year renovation and expansion, but is lending its classic Canadian paintings to the Royal Ontario Museum. The ROM announced on Friday that starting Nov. 22, it will host an exhibition adapted from Old Growth, the McMichael’s closing show that featured highlights of its collection.
Entitled This Land: The Group of Seven and their Contemporaries, the ROM show will include paintings by Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, as well as their female peers – Emily Carr, Yvonne McKague Housser, Anne Savage and Bess Harris.
In recent years, the McMichael has made a point of showing the Canadian women who were painting alongside the all-male members of the Group.
“In an era when the world wants more Canada, the ROM is thrilled to host this landmark exhibition,” ROM director and chief executive Nicholas Bell said in a statement. Focusing on landscape, the exhibition will be organized in eight geographic sections, including Georgian Bay, Algonquin Park, Algoma, La Cloche Mountains, Lake Superior, Rocky Mountains, British Columbia, and the Arctic, as the members of the Ontario-based Group pushed west and north.
The ROM promises enhanced interpretation for the art show, drawing on its expertise in natural history to look at geography and plant life in the paintings. It will also investigate the Indigenous names and stories of the places depicted. The exhibition will run until Sept. 4, 2028.
The McMichael, the only major art museum in Canada devoted exclusively to Canadian art, is located on a forested site on the Humber River in Kleinburg, a village in Vaughan about 40 minutes north of downtown Toronto.
The McMichael renovation, expected to cost $150-million and last until 2029, will update the building’s systems and add new gallery spaces, more room for conservation and framing, and a revenue-generating event space.
The ROM-McMichael partnership is being funded by Jeff Willner, chair of the ROM board of governors, and his wife Stacey Madge.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct Jeff Willner's title. He is the chair of the board of governors.