Announcing the Art Museum’s Fall 2025 Exhibition Season

Two powerful exhibitions confronting urgent questions of land stewardship and the climate crisis open on September 3

Art Hunter, Untitled (Controlled burn at Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung mounds), 2023. Digital print. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Earthwork

September 3 – December 20, 2025
Opening Night: Wednesday, September 3, 5pm – 8pm
Art Museum at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto Art Centre, 15 King’s College Circle

Works by Alex Jacobs-Blum, Art Hunter, BUSH Gallery, Edward Poitras, Faye HeavyShield, Lisa Myers, Michael Belmore, Mike MacDonald, Protect the Tract Collective
Curated by Mikinaak Migwans

Earthwork reframes a key concept from the Minimalist and Land Art movements of the 1960s and 70s, reclaiming it from an Indigenous lens. Bringing together histories of land defence movements, the cultivation of plants, and ancestral practices of prescribed burns alongside contemporary artworks, the exhibition considers multiple layers of engagement with the land as creative acts of relational intervention.

The exhibition is made possible with generous support from Partners in Art. Exhibition programming is supported by Toronto Arts Council Strategic Funding and the Mounds and Memory Project, University of Toronto, funded by SSHRC.

Kent Chan, Future Tropics, 2023–24. Two-channel video. Image courtesy of the artist.

Dwelling Under Distant Suns

September 3 – December 20, 2025
Opening Night: Wednesday, September 3, 5pm – 8pm
Art Museum at the University of Toronto
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, 7 Hart House Circle

Works by Kent Chan, Alvin Luong, and Solveig Qu Suess
Curated by Yantong Li

Dwelling Under Distant Suns originates from struggles to represent an increasingly precarious environmental landscape of slow violence that occurs out of place and out of sight. Inquiring into alternative modes of apprehension, the exhibition is guided by a documentary impulse and narrative foresight imaginative enough to offer us a different kind of witnessing of sights unseen. In the exhibition, methods of mythmaking and speculation underpin the filmic apparatus as channels of inquiry, entangling heat, water, and agricultural lands with human movements on the ground as capsules into an environmental and geopolitical past, present, and future.

This exhibition is produced as part of the requirements for the MVS degree in Curatorial Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto.

It is supported by the Jackman Humanities Program for the Arts as part of its 2025–26 research theme, Dystopia and Trust.

Alex Jacobs-Blum, Ga.ih.wa.ne:ge:’, 2019. Digital photograph, inkjet print on Hanemühle Photo Rag Bright White mounted on 3mm alupanel, 13″ x 20″. Image courtesy of the artist.

Public Programs

Opening Reception: Fall 2025 Exhibitions
Wednesday, September 3, 5pm – 8pm
University of Toronto Art Centre and Justina M. Barnicke Gallery

Join the curators and featured artists in celebrating the public opening of the Art Museum’s Fall 2025 exhibitions. The evening begins at 5:30pm with a Grass Dance performance by the Miikaans Mobile Movement Lab in the University College Quad, followed by opening remarks at 6:30pm at the University of Toronto Art Centre and at 7pm at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery.

Curatorial Tour: Earthwork
Saturday, September 6, 3pm – 4pm
University of Toronto Art Centre

Join curator Mikinaak Migwans for a free public guided tour of the exhibition Earthwork. Migwans will discuss his curatorial interest in reclaiming the Land Art concept of “earthwork” through an Indigenous lens.

Teach-In with Akni:ho’gwa:s Collective
Wednesday, September 17, 10am – 3pm
Hart House East Common Room and University of Toronto Art Centre

Join the Art Museum and Hart House’s artists-in-residence, the Akni:ho’gwa:s Artist Collective, for a teach-in event that continues their exploration of mapping, counter-mapping, and the impacts of recent federal and provincial legislation on Haudenosaunee and other Indigenous Peoples. The program includes several workshops and a visit to the exhibition Earthwork. Free lunch will be provided.

Curatorial Tour: Dwelling Under Distant Suns
Wednesday, September 24, 6pm – 7pm
Saturday, November 8, 2pm – 3pm
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery

Join curator Yantong Li for an exploration of the themes and artworks featured in Dwelling Under Distant Suns, an exhibition that highlights the struggle to represent increasingly precarious landscapes affected by the climate crisis.

Art Bus Excursion: Plant Signals with Lisa Myers
Saturday, October 11, 12pm – 4:30pm
University of Toronto Art Centre and Stong House

Join artist, curator, and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University, Lisa Myers, along with plant survey research collective Lou Holloway, Ever Palma Hernandez, and Tiva Kawakami, for a thought-provoking offsite excursion presented in conjunction with the Earthwork exhibition.

Artist Tour with Alex Jacobs-Blum
Wednesday, October 22, 6pm – 7:30pm
University of Toronto Art Centre

Discover the captivating work of Alex Jacobs-Blum in the exhibition Earthwork. Alex invites audiences into a thoughtful conversation about her lived experiences as a Gayogo̱hó nǫʼ (Cayuga) and German visual artist and independent curator, and her practice’s deep connection to the land and natural world.

All programs are free and open to the public. More programs to be announced soon! For more information and to register, visit: artmuseum.utoronto.ca/programs/

Visiting the Art Museum

Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
(in Hart House)
7 Hart House Circle
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3H3

University of Toronto Art Centre
(in University College)
15 King’s College Circle
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3H7

Admission is free. All are welcome.

Museum Hours
Tuesday to Saturday, 12 noon – 5pm
Wednesday, 12 noon – 8pm
Sunday and Monday closed

artmuseum.utoronto.ca
artmuseum@utoronto.ca
Facebook @ArtMuseumUofT
Twitter @artmuseumuoft
Instagram @artmuseumuoft
416-978-8398

Our Supporters

The Art Museum at the University of Toronto gratefully acknowledges operating support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Government of Ontario, and the Toronto Arts Council.

We gratefully acknowledge additional project support for Dwelling Under Distant Suns from the Reesa Greenberg Curatorial Studies Award and International Travel Fund, the Ontario Arts Council, the Jackman Humanities Institute, and the Graduate Architecture, Landscape & Design Student Union (GALDSU).

Media Contact: Marianne Rellin, marianne.rellin@utoronto.ca