Guest curators Rachel Gotlieb and Martha Kelleher selected just over 100 pieces, to illustrate how artists, designers and craft makers, working over the last two centuries, have managed to transcend the pitfalls of kitsch and cliché, while creating universal works drawn from and inspired by motifs of Canadian identity. The objects demonstrate the extraordinary ways in which, nature-based signifiers of Canadianness have endured – and despite the enormously diverse ethnic heritage of our by now overwhelmingly urban society. Martha Kelleher believes that, "Today these now iconic indigent flora and fauna images help to form a rich and diverse heritage that provides us with a greater understanding of our culture."  

By bringing together works from art, design and craft, often regarded by scholars and curators as distinct and separate disciplines, the curators also address this low art/high art bias by revealing that Canadian symbolic flora and fauna are vital sources of inspiration and discourse across the craft, art and design communities.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Rachel Gotlieb and Martha Kelleher, and a third by Ross Fox, of the Department of Western Art and Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum.

Works by the following artists are included in the exhibition:

Mauricio Affonso, Stuart Ash, unknown Anishnaabe artist, Natasha Bailey, Mary Anne Barkhouse, Anne Barros, Amy Belanger, Douglas Boyd, Carol Bradley, Keith Campbell, Emily Carr, Clarice Cliff, Brent Comber, E.B. Cox, George Dancy, Robert Davidson, Dominion Glass Company, George Emery, Excelsior Glass Company, Todd Falkowsky, Bob Ford, Michael Fortune, Bud Fujikawa, Andrew Fussell, Frank Gehry, Gordon & Keith,  Frédéric Guibrunet, Emanuel Hahn, Thor Hansen, George Huel, Cynthia Hathaway, Arthur Heming, Robert Hendery, Lawren S. Harris,  Heather Cooper Company, Sabina Hill, Robert Holmes, Hothouse Design Studio, Elizabeth Wilkes Hoey,  A.Y. Jackson, Virginia Johnson, J.W. Kilgour & Bros., Yvon Laroche, Tilman Lichter, Arthur Lismer, Loyal Loot Collective, JEH MacDonald, Thoreau MacDonald, Anthony Mann, Eric Matthew, Laura McKibbon, David Milne, Minton, Katherine Morley, Melissa Morrow, Earl Muldoe, unknown Northwest Coast artist, Ontario Glass Company, Charles Pachter, Pierre-Yves Pelletier, Reeva Perkins, Ann Pocket, Pierre Poulin, Christopher Pratt,  Bill Reddick, Bill Reid, Bo Scaife Casey, Elda Smith, Steven Tracy Smith, Robert Southcott, Guy St-Arnaud, Harold Stacey, Thomas Furnival & Sons, Harold Town, Patrick Turner, Oksana Ulisko, Frederick Arthur Verner, Anneke van Bommel, Edward Walley, Don Watt, Joyce Wieiland, Elizabeth Wyn Wood, Thomas Wyon, Thea Yuzyk, and Tristan Zimmerman.

This exhibition is partially funded by the Government of Canada through the the Department of Canadian Heritage, Museums Assistance Program and by UTAC’s 2008 Exhibition Support Sponsor, Manulife Financial, and Parks Canada Agency, which collaborated to present our Opening Reception.

Cette exposition est financée en partie par le ministère du Patrimoine canadien du gouvernement du Canada dans le cadre du Programme d’aide aux musées et en partie par Manulife Financial, Sponsor des UTAC Expositions en 2008. La réception pour l'ouverture de l'exposition est présentée en collaboration avec l'Agence Parcs Canada.