About

About

The Blackwood Gallery is a contemporary art centre situated on the University of Toronto Mississauga campus, and dedicated to open, public research. We present curated exhibitions featuring the work of local, national, and international professional artists across the University of Toronto Mississauga campus: in the Blackwood Gallery in room 140 of the Kaneff Centre on Inner Circle Road, the e|gallery on the ground floor of the Communication, Culture, and Information Technology Building (CCT), and in four lightboxes on the CCT Building, CCT Courtyard, William Davis Building, and Kaneff Centre.

Our programming includes off-site projects and exhibitions by graduating students in Art & Art History, a joint program of the Department of Visual Studies (UTM) and Sheridan College.

The Blackwood Gallery pays CARFAC fees.

Mandate

The Blackwood is committed to thinking about the gallery as a space for living ideas—for holding together research, creation, inquiry, interaction, and conversation.

We ask questions and offer a diagnosis of our contemporary times in essay-exhibitions, discursive events, commissioned artistic works, performances, publishing platforms, and educational projects.

We offer visitors opportunities to grapple with the conflicts, challenges, and questions of our time: How do our respective living conditions impinge upon each other? What kind of a future do we want to live in? How can we shape our world more intelligently, but also more poetically?

We support and activate artists, curators, and writers who incite us to be responsive, cooperative, critical, and answerable. 

We nurture connections between local and international communities, believing in the importance of working across varied social contexts and feeding the conversations that support artistic, curatorial, and pedagogical practices.

We cultivate cultures of learning, provide mentorship, and facilitate professional development.

We respond to diversity mandates within the Canadian art ecology and work to promote equity and inclusion through strategies of anti-oppression, feminism, and social justice.

We continually strive to open up new perspectives.

Here visitors can experience art as the practice of experimenting, questioning, discovering, dismantling, rebuilding, amplifying, imagining, conjuring.

Admission to the Blackwood Gallery is always free of charge.

History

Opened in 1969 as the Erindale College Art Gallery—the first public art gallery in the Peel region—the Gallery was renamed in 1992 in honour of Canadian artist David Blackwood who was artist-in-residence at UTM from 1967-1971 (www.davidblackwood.com). The Blackwood family marked the occasion by making a significant gift of art works that remain a cornerstone of the Blackwood’s permanent collection.

Accessibility

Physical Access and Facilities

The Blackwood Gallery endeavours to increase access and remove barriers to engagement with contemporary art, and to treat all members of our publics in an equitable manner. For more information about the University of Toronto's accessibility policies, please click here.

Both the Blackwood Gallery in the Innovation Complex and the e|gallery in the CCT Building are accessible to people who use mobility devices, with doorways measuring over 32” wide. All entrances at ground floor level to both buildings are equipped with power-assisted doors. 

The Blackwood Gallery is located on the ground floor of the newly renovated Innovation Complex, which includes open spaces, round sloped corners, and windows to facilitate visual communication and navigation. Accessible multi-user gendered washrooms are located at ground level.

The e|gallery in the CCT Building is located on the ground floor, accessible via the east entrance (adjacent to parking lot 9) at ground level, or by elevator from the main floor entrance and at parking garage levels 1, 3, and 5. Accessible multi-user gendered washrooms are located at ground level, and accessible multi-user all-gender washrooms are located on the third floor of the CCT Building.

For more information about washrooms on campus, please click here.

Parking

Barrier-free parking spaces are available for those who have a Provincial Ministry of Transportation Accessible Parking Permit (APP). Accessible parking areas closest to gallery spaces include the Student Centre/Kaneff Building lot, adjacent to the Blackwood, and the CCT Garage, levels P1 and P3. For more information on barrier-free parking at UTM, click here.

Signage, Website, Interpretive Materials and Programming

We have recently embarked on plans with the University to enhance accessibility for Deaf persons, including increased visual signage with perceptible information, AODA compliancy for our website, and the integration of inter-titles and captions in our video documentation of public programs and interpretive material. The Blackwood Gallery aims to increase the accessibility of its online presence and its interpretive materials. Please contact us at blackwood.gallery@utoronto.ca for additional information or to discuss accessibility needs for upcoming programs, events, tours, etc.

Positive Space

The Blackwood Gallery works to promote equity, inclusion, and intersectional understandings of identity on campus, and to challenge discrimination based on gender and sexual diversity. For more about UTM’s positive space initiatives, please click here.


Floor Plans
Acknowledgements

Generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Department of Visual Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga.

The Blackwood Gallery Work-Study Program is funded in part by the Dean's Office of the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Funding for additional staff support made possible through the Young Canada Works in Heritage Organizations program, Department of Canadian Heritage. The Canadian Museums Association administers the museum component of the YCW program on behalf of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

 

Images
Photos by Blackwood Gallery