How to Use this Website
The Blackwood’s new website, an expanded and content-rich online space, launched in January 2021. Developed over the course of a year-long engagement with designer Alan Woo, the website mobilizes strategies implemented in recent Blackwood projects to support varied modes of navigation, research, and inquiry.
In this video, Director/Curator Christine Shaw takes visitors through a few of the site’s new features and ways of exploring. From the Index and Glossary to the Reader and search function, we invite you to spend time exploring Blackwood's programs, publications, and in-process projects, using this new set of navigation and research tools.
The Blackwood is a contemporary art centre at the University of Toronto Mississauga dedicated to open, public research. We present curated exhibitions featuring the work of local, national, and international professional artists in on-campus gallery spaces; program off-site projects throughout the GTHA; support artistic research, commissions, and residencies; and foster transdisciplinary strategies for knowledge production and circulation via a robust publishing program.
Our programming includes annual 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
Staff
The Work Study Program offers paid, on-campus positions that provide students with an opportunity to deepen their knowledge and strengthen their skills. Work Study students at the Blackwood explore how their academic studies translate to career possibilities through hands-on work in the galleries, research in support of ongoing Blackwood projects, and student-led programming.
Current Work Study students:
Adanna Alyssa-Scott
Ollie Bryers
Chhata Gupta
Amanpreet Chana
Marissa Maennling
Leila Nie
Fabiha Ruthmila
Chuxuan (Aria) Zheng
The VST410: Internship in Visual Studies provides students enrolled in this fourth-year course an opportunity to gain practical experience at an arts institution. Interns at the Blackwood are involved in education, outreach, and public engagement in support of programming throughout the academic year.
Current VST410 Intern:
Sara Li
Advisory Board
Francisco-Fernando Granados
k.g. Guttman
Maria Hupfield
John Paul Ricco (Chair)
Sarah Sharma
Christine Shaw (ex officio)
Gediminas Urbonas
Indu Vashist
Opportunities
The Blackwood is currently submissions to the 2025 Art & Art History Graduating Students' Exhibition. For the full details, eligibility, and how to apply, click here. Deadline: January 6, 2025, 11:59pm.
Location and Directions
Location
The Blackwood is located on University of Toronto Mississauga campus. Click here for a detailed campus map.
The Blackwood presents exhibitions, programs, and publications in our two galleries, four outdoor lightboxes, and in public spaces on UTM campus. Download a printable map for your visit.
U The Clearing audio installation
V Meeting Place video installation
X Blackwood Gallery, Kaneff Centre 140
Y e|gallery, CCIT lower level
Z1–4 Blackwood lightboxes
Directions
Via shuttle from University of Toronto St. George Campus
Students with a valid UTM student ID card are eligible to travel free of charge. Non students must purchase a ticket from the Porter's Desk at Hart House or from the Student Centre at UTM. Tickets are $7.00 each way. Click here for the shuttle bus schedule and more information.
Via TTC/MiWay
MiWay buses depart from Kipling subway station for UTM approximately every 10-15 minutes. All Mississauga Transit buses accept payment by cash and Presto card. For exact times and fares, please visit the MiWay website.
There are two options:
1. On weekdays from 6:30am–8pm you can take the 101A Dundas Express West via UTM. The ride takes about 45 minutes.
2. At other times of the day or on weekends, you can take the 1C West bus, which takes the same route, but makes all the stops. The ride takes about 55 minutes. This bus runs until midnight.
Via GO Train / Bus
The Clarkson GO Train station is the easiest way to access the campus by train. From the station, the 110N MiWay express bus departs regularly for the UTM campus. All Mississauga Transit buses accept payment by cash and Presto card. For routes, schedules and fares, please visit the GO Transit website. For bus fares and times, please visit the MiWay website.
By Car
From Toronto, visitors may take the Gardiner Expressway to the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) westbound. Exit the highway at Mississauga Road and turn north as indicated by the signs. Continue traveling along Mississauga Road North for approximately 9 minutes. Upon crossing Dundas St., UTM campus is on the right hand side.
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[at]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 see the Sexual and Gender Diversity Office.
Acknowledgments
The Blackwood is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the 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.
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 (1941–2022), who was artist-in-residence at UTM from 1967–71. The Blackwood family marked the occasion by making a significant gift of artworks that remain a cornerstone of the Blackwood’s permanent collection. David Blackwood passed away peacefully on July 2, 2022 in Port Hope, Ontario. See his obituary published by the Globe & Mail for more on his artistic practice and legacy.
Contact
Sign up for our newsletter for occasional email updates on upcoming programs.
Please send all general inquiries to blackwood.gallery[at]utoronto.ca.
Tel: 905-828-3789
There are two gallery locations: the Blackwood Gallery in Kaneff Centre and the e|gallery in the CCT Building. The galleries are currently open. Hours of operation: Monday–Saturday, 12–5pm, Wednesdays until 8pm.
