Art Gallery Of Ontario

Audio recorded verbal descriptions provide an accessible and detailed narrative to extend your experience of the AGO. Explore the AGO facade and the artworks outside the building, Henry Moore's Two Forms and Brian Jungen's Couch Monster: Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch’ill. These descriptions, rich in detail and sensory language, provide a vivid exploration of form, texture, and artistic intention, ensuring that all visitors can engage deeply with these celebrated pieces of architecture and public art.

Audio recorded verbal descriptions provide an accessible and detailed narrative to extend your experience of the AGO. Explore the AGO facade and the artworks outside the building, Henry Moore's Two Forms and Brian Jungen's Couch Monster: Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch’ill. These descriptions, rich in detail and sensory language, provide a vivid exploration of form, texture, and artistic intention, ensuring that all visitors can engage deeply with these celebrated pieces of architecture and public art.

Audio recorded verbal descriptions provide an accessible and detailed narrative to extend your experience of the AGO. Explore the AGO facade and the artworks outside the building, Henry Moore's Two Forms and Brian Jungen's Couch Monster: Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch’ill. These descriptions, rich in detail and sensory language, provide a vivid exploration of form, texture, and artistic intention, ensuring that all visitors can engage deeply with these celebrated pieces of architecture and public art.

AGO Exhibition Audio Tracks

AGO Exhibition Audio Tracks

AGO Exhibition Audio Tracks

AGO Exhibition Audio Tracks

Sound clip of rowing in water

Tree of Life 1985 acrylic on canvas tarpaulin with metal grommets Private collection All images © Keith Haring Foundation This large painting is hung in landscape orientation and is approximately 10’ high x 12’ wide. It is created in Haring’s instantly recognizable style which repeats brightly coloured and stylised shapes outlined in black . Tree of Life is a painting of a large green tree contrasted against a bright pink background, underneath it, four yellow dancing figures are shown from the waist up. It is mounted directly to the wall with screws through grommets, 13 across and 11 high. The top two thirds of the painting are taken up by the trees leaves which sprout off two main branches that split off at the trunk. The branches corkscrew, as do twiggy offshoots. Each offshoot results in either an oval leaf shape with one line down the centre indicating the fold of the leaf shape or, sprouts a similar shape with an added round head and pumping arms with rounded hands on the ends. In total there are 9 t

Untitled 1984 acrylic and enamel on canvas The Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles All images © Keith Haring Foundation During the 1980s, wealth inequality in the United States grew significantly under Ronald Reagan’s neoliberal trickle-down economics policies known as Reaganomics. Haring criticized greed and capitalism in several works featuring the image of the “capitalist pig.” This tarp painting portrays a pig spewing money-green vomit made up of computers, televisions, clocks, airplanes, and other modern-day objects. The green bile pools on the ground from which little figures climb, suckling the sickly pig’s teats. This work is a monstrous depiction of the struggle of production in an era when everything was deemed consumable.

Untitled 1985 Acrylic and oil on canvas Courtesy of The Parker Foundation All images © Keith Haring Foundation Haring grew up and came out as a gay man during a time that encouraged increased freedom of sexual expression, largely fuelled by the counterculture, women’s rights, and gay liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. By the early 1980s, a new countermovement emerged that was led by conservative politicians and the religious right. Simultaneously, the AIDS epidemic was growing. Painted in 1985, this untitled work responds to these realities, showing a fiery hellscape of sexual aggression and torture. The theme of hell—often depicted with scenes of uninhibited sexuality—has been addressed throughout art history, from Auguste Rodin’s The Gates of Hell (1880–1917) to Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (1500s). Haring’s version remains true to his signature line, while also depicting a cast of human and animal figures as well as Christian symbols such as frogs, serpents, and angels.

The Great White Way 1988 acrylic on canvas The Keith Haring Foundation All images © Keith Haring Foundation Stretched in the shape of a penis, this massive painting is a critical visualization of what author bell hooks described as “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” The pink phallus is decorated with black lines that make up an intricate scene of weapons, violence, torture, and other abuses of power—a visual representation of the problems of Euro-American society. Haring’s title implies the white supremacist ideology underpinning these activities. The painting shows a phallocentric world in which profit and power in the name of “good” and God are used as tools of oppression. The Great White Way is a prime example of what is perhaps Haring’s greatest skill: the ability to make something look like shallow fun—in this case, a massive, cartoonish, pink, candy-striped penis—while simultaneously speaking truth to some of society’s foremost tyrannies.

Untitled 1988 acrylic on canvas Private collection All images © Keith Haring Foundation This untitled work shows a human figure struggling to walk up a staircase while carrying a massive egg tied to its back. The egg is cracked and a sperm with devil horns bursts from its shell. The painting speaks profoundly to the AIDS epidemic that took the lives of so many within Haring’s community, including his own. Using monumental scale, a palette drained of colour, and graphic imagery, Haring represented the impossible weight of the AIDS crisis.

The AGO is home to the Thomson Collection of Ship Models: over 130 examples of miniaturized ships spanning hundreds of years of maritime history. One of the most important models in the collection is George Stockwell’s (1729-1805) 1774 model of the Bristol. Designed in 1768 and completed in 1775, the Bristol was a 50-gun fourth-rate ship of the line built for the Royal Navy amidst England’s war to suppress the independence movement in its American colonies. Image credit: British fourth-rate two-decker 50-gun warship: Bristol (detail) 1774 George Stockwell, (British, 1729-1805) Georgian Model, scale1:48 The Thomson Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

The AGO is home to the Thomson Collection of Ship Models: over 130 examples of miniaturized ships spanning hundreds of years of maritime history. One of the most important models in the collection is George Stockwell’s (1729-1805) 1774 model of the Bristol. Designed in 1768 and completed in 1775, the Bristol was a 50-gun fourth-rate ship of the line built for the Royal Navy amidst England’s war to suppress the independence movement in its American colonies. Image credit: British fourth-rate two-decker 50-gun warship: Bristol (detail) 1774 George Stockwell, (British, 1729-1805) Georgian Model, scale1:48 The Thomson Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

The AGO is home to the Thomson Collection of Ship Models: over 130 examples of miniaturized ships spanning hundreds of years of maritime history. One of the most important models in the collection is George Stockwell’s (1729-1805) 1774 model of the Bristol. Designed in 1768 and completed in 1775, the Bristol was a 50-gun fourth-rate ship of the line built for the Royal Navy amidst England’s war to suppress the independence movement in its American colonies. Image credit: British fourth-rate two-decker 50-gun warship: Bristol (detail) 1774 George Stockwell, (British, 1729-1805) Georgian Model, scale1:48 The Thomson Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

The AGO is home to the Thomson Collection of Ship Models: over 130 examples of miniaturized ships spanning hundreds of years of maritime history. One of the most important models in the collection is George Stockwell’s (1729-1805) 1774 model of the Bristol. Designed in 1768 and completed in 1775, the Bristol was a 50-gun fourth-rate ship of the line built for the Royal Navy amidst England’s war to suppress the independence movement in its American colonies. Image credit: British fourth-rate two-decker 50-gun warship: Bristol (detail) 1774 George Stockwell, (British, 1729-1805) Georgian Model, scale1:48 The Thomson Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

The AGO is home to the Thomson Collection of Ship Models: over 130 examples of miniaturized ships spanning hundreds of years of maritime history. One of the most important models in the collection is George Stockwell’s (1729-1805) 1774 model of the Bristol. Designed in 1768 and completed in 1775, the Bristol was a 50-gun fourth-rate ship of the line built for the Royal Navy amidst England’s war to suppress the independence movement in its American colonies. Image credit: British fourth-rate two-decker 50-gun warship: Bristol (detail) 1774 George Stockwell, (British, 1729-1805) Georgian Model, scale1:48 The Thomson Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

The AGO is home to the Thomson Collection of Ship Models: over 130 examples of miniaturized ships spanning hundreds of years of maritime history. One of the most important models in the collection is George Stockwell’s (1729-1805) 1774 model of the Bristol. Designed in 1768 and completed in 1775, the Bristol was a 50-gun fourth-rate ship of the line built for the Royal Navy amidst England’s war to suppress the independence movement in its American colonies. Image credit: British fourth-rate two-decker 50-gun warship: Bristol (detail) 1774 George Stockwell, (British, 1729-1805) Georgian Model, scale1:48 The Thomson Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

The AGO is home to the Thomson Collection of Ship Models: over 130 examples of miniaturized ships spanning hundreds of years of maritime history. One of the most important models in the collection is George Stockwell’s (1729-1805) 1774 model of the Bristol. Designed in 1768 and completed in 1775, the Bristol was a 50-gun fourth-rate ship of the line built for the Royal Navy amidst England’s war to suppress the independence movement in its American colonies. Image credit: British fourth-rate two-decker 50-gun warship: Bristol (detail) 1774 George Stockwell, (British, 1729-1805) Georgian Model, scale1:48 The Thomson Collection Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto