The Gallery at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre represents a 2,500 square foot area on our main floor. At present programming of this space is the responsibility of two important community committees: the Gendai Gallery Committee and the Heritage Committee.

The Gendai Gallery promotes excellence in primarily contemporary art & design with a curatorial emphasis on the work by Canadian & International artists of Japanese ancestry and of the larger Asian Community.

Situated within Toronto's Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, Gendai Gallery is interested in art in the context of culture and community -- local and global -- and an ongoing interrogation of these elements.

Gendai Gallery is committed to a multi-disciplinary program encompassing visual art, design, performing arts, and literature. We encourage inter-disciplinary work, collaboration, dialogue, and art education. We challenge culturally defined distinctions between art and craft, including artisanal practices.

In 1994, a group of artists formed an ad hoc committee dedicated to the creation of a public art gallery. This collective of artists, designers and curators joined together with the intention of exhibiting contemporary art and design in the new Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, which at that time was under construction.

The founding artists, curators and arts administrators, and the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre then embarked on a process of widespread community consultation regarding its vision and activities. In 1997, this process was formalized through a commissioned Gendai Gallery Feasibility Study carried out by N.L. Hushion and Associates.

Gendai Gallery was incorporated as a non-profit entity on November 16, 2000. Since its inaugural exhibition in 2000, Gendai Gallery has been steadily developing its programs. The gallery's programs are made possible through the efforts of a volunteer Board of Directors. The Gallery also relies on volunteer advisors from the arts community to help carry out its mission. At present, Gendai Gallery also functions with an Interim Manager.

Click here to visit the Gendai Gallery website and learn more about up-coming exhibits, volunteer and members opportunities and donations.