Varley Art Gallery opens winter exhibitions

The Varley Art Gallery of Markham invites you to the opening of its 2026 Winter Exhibitions: “Sameer Farooq: The Fairest Order in the World” and “Sketching the Past.”

Both exhibitions open Saturday, Feb. 7 and run through Sunday, May 3. The opening reception runs from 2 to 4 p.m. and will feature in-gallery talks by Farooq and curator Anike Glaude, an immersive dance performance and hands-on activities for visitors of all ages. The opening is free and registration is not required.

Farooq is a Cape Breton-born, Toronto-based artist of Pakistani and Ugandan Indian descent. His solo exhibition offers a “deeply poetic space” to reflect on the “fraught and violent histories” of art and anthropological museums, their colonial origins, structures and impulses, says the Varley Art Gallery.

“Farooq invites us to envision what the museum might become through the mechanics of restitution, what it may shift to collect and document, and what kind of experiences it could nurture,” it adds. The exhibition is curated by Mona Filip, the chief curator at Contemporary Calgary, and organized and circulated by Dalhousie Art Gallery.

“Sketching the Past” invites visitors to share the “careful observations” of Frederick Varley – who wandered the halls of Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in the 1950s with a pencil in hand – and consider why we visit museums. Varley sketched in the Natural History and Art and Culture galleries, drawn especially to the Chinese collection and dinosaur halls.

“Through these drawings, we glimpse how the ROM displayed its collections in the 1950s and are invited to reflect on how museum collection practices, display methods and storytelling have evolved, shaping the ways we remember and imagine our shared cultural heritage,” the Varley Art Gallery says. The exhibition is curated by Glaude.

The gallery is open Tuesday to Friday from 12 to 4 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It’s located at 216 Main St. in the historic village of Unionville in Markham. Admission is free.

Visit varleyartgallery.ca for more details.