Koffler Centre of the Arts

koffler exhibition
Image: Ghazaleh Avarzamani, Never Never Land (Koffler Gallery installation detail), 2019. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.

The Koffler Centre of the Arts is a cultural platform that explores critical ideas and concerns of our time through exhibitions, publications, performances, literary events and digital initiatives. We examine complex issues through transformative art experiences that stimulate intercultural dialogue and position Jewish identity in conversation with diverse perspectives and global voices.

Featuring a year-round program of exhibitions, publications, public programs and educational initiatives, the Koffler Gallery fosters new production while equally aiming to expand the visibility of existing work by Canadian and international artists. The program positions the contemporary Jewish experience in a context of comparative discussions of identity, memory and place.
 
Committed to nurturing and promoting Canadian artists, the Koffler Gallery provides a stimulating and supportive environment for the creation of new work, the promotion of current artistic practices, and the exchange of ideas across disciplines. Programs aim for the highest artistic standards while being accessible and engaging for audiences of all ages and backgrounds. As a Jewish organization, the Koffler Gallery promotes ideals of social justice, equality and inclusiveness, affirming the power of art to provide common ground and activate social change.

Address: Artscape Youngplace, 180 Shaw St., # 104-105, Toronto, ON, M6J 2W5
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Related Events

Upcoming

October 15, 2023

A panel discussion exploring the intersections of art, architecture, and memory through the lens of the Synagogue at Babyn Yar, Ukraine.

Upcoming

October 22, 2023

to October 29, 2023

This research-informed play explores themes of womanhood, trauma, sisterhood and resilience.  

Last Chance

September 23, 2023

to September 24, 2023

Visit the Koffler Gallery in its extended opening hours, and listen to traditional klezmer music until midnight.

Archived

September 12, 2023

Koffler Gallery extends an invitation to those working in all pedagogical fields to attend our Fall 2023 Educator Open House. 

Archived

September 10, 2023

Koffler Arts presents a poetry reading by Gili Haimovich, a prizewinning Israeli Canadian poet writing bilingually.

Archived

September 10, 2023

The Koffler Centre for the Arts and Holy Blossom Temple are pleased to present a selection of the 2023 shortlisted authors in two lively and insightful panel conversations.

Archived

August 24, 2023

to September 6, 2023

Koffler Arts will present a series of four film screenings to complement the exhibition The Synagogue at Babyn Yar: Turning the Nightmare of Evil into a Shared Dream of Good.

Archived

September 10, 2023

One Sunday afternoon per month during The Synagogue at Babyn Yar exhibition, the Koffler will host a Family Activity.

Archived

August 27, 2023

What does it mean to host an exhibition about a synagogue that tells the story of a site that is somewhere else?

Archived

August 22, 2023

to September 12, 2023

Participants will respond to visual cues and prompts inspired by The Synagogue at Babyn Yar exhibition, and will be invited to share their first-draft compositions.

Archived

August 13, 2023

Join the Koffler for a workshop with Laya Crust to learn about how to write Hebrew in calligraphy!

Archived

July 16, 2023

Rabbi Alisa Zilbershtein will speak about her life and the Jewish community in Kyiv before and during the ongoing war, and her experiences.

Archived

July 9, 2023

Artist and writer Marisa Kelly invites kids ages 10+ and their adult companions to discuss what it means to be a photojournalist, then build a pinhole camera.

Archived

June 1, 2023

to June 21, 2023

The Koffler presents a series of free community writing workshops in collaboration with the Writers Collective of Canada (WCC).

Archived

May 18, 2023

Lenka Lichtenberg performs music from her latest album, Thieves of Dreams: Songs of Theresienstadt’s Secret Poetess, which was awarded the 2023 Juno Awards for Global Music Album Of The Year.

Archived

April 18, 2023

This discussion will focus on the history of Babyn Yar, the synagogue, and future plans for the site.

Archived

April 17, 2023

Opening reception of the world-premiere exhibition of The Synagogue at Babyn Yar: Turning the Nightmares of Evil into a shared Dream of Good.

Archived

February 24, 2023

The collective conversation will focus on SIREN artworks to interrogate participant initiated ideas, premises and frameworks.

Archived

February 22, 2023

Through the collective explorations of Art, Power & Money, and Art, Nature, Thresholds & Borders, participants will ask: How do we respond to foundational principles and ideas about our sense of community?

Archived

February 21, 2023

A screening of An Opera for the World (2017) as part of the public program for SIREN / nichola feldman-kiss.

Archived

January 16, 2023

Join us for an artist talk with nichola feldman-kiss and UK-based curator Karen Alexander as they discuss the current exhibition SIREN.

Archived

November 23, 2021

Awards will be announced in four categories: Fiction, History, Non-Fiction and Young Adult/Children’s, with winning authors in each category attending.

Archived

November 16, 2021

to November 18, 2021

The Koffler is delighted to present three virtual panels featuring shortlisted Vine Awards authors on November 16, 17 and 18, 2021. 

Archived

October 15, 2021

to October 17, 2021

An exhibition of video installations that explores themes of climate change and environmental crisis.

Archived

April 15, 2021

In this one-hour workshop, folks will explore the process of mindfulness to create abstract images based on their emotions

Archived

April 7, 2021

In a discussion focused on contentious collecting and preservation practices rooted in extractive imperialism and systematic looting, curators Candice Hopkins, Dan Hicks and Julie Crooks will consider frameworks for the restitution of art and material culture.

Archived

May 20, 2021

Award-winning author Riva Lehrer will join writer and director, Chase Joynt to discuss the socially challenged body in her new memoir, Golem Girl.

Archived

April 13, 2021

to April 14, 2021

The Canadian launch of author Judy Batalion’s, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos, in conversation with Toronto’s revered broadcaster and journalist, Garvia Bailey.

Archived

February 17, 2021

In an utterly unique approach to biography, On Love and Tyranny traces the life and work of the iconic German Jewish intellectual Hannah Arendt, whose political philosophy and understandings of evil, totalitarianism, love, and exile prove essential amid the rise of the refugee crisis and authoritarian regimes around the world.

Archived

December 19, 2020

to December 20, 2020

We will explore how our geographical and cultural differences inform our peoples’ practices and responses, and question how we can bring each other value and the inherent artistic possibilities within these conversations.

Archived

November 11, 2020

Featuring four artists who engage with elements of fiction to address buried truths – Ivana Dizdar, Rosalie Favell and Anique Jordan, in conversation with moderator Madelyne Beckles.

Archived

November 2, 2020

A conversation between multidisciplinary artist Carol Sawyer and Chief Curator of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Michelle Jacques.

Archived

November 12, 2020

Celebrating the 2020 Vine Awards shortlisted history writers – Zelda Abramson, Matti Friedman, John Lynch, and Heidi J.S. Tworek – in conversation with juror Allan Levine.

Archived

November 10, 2020

Featuring the 2020 Vine Awards shortlisted non-fiction writers – Naomi K. Lewis, Ayelet Tsabari, and Diana Wichtel – in conversation with juror Judy Batalion.

Archived

November 18, 2020

A national awards program that honours both the best Canadian Jewish writers and non-Jewish Canadian authors who deal with Jewish subjects in Fiction, History, Non-Fiction, Young Adult/Children’s literature, and Poetry.

Archived

November 30, 2020

Bestselling author Catherine Bush speaks with Saleema Nawaz and reflects on human connectivity amidst world-changing events.

Archived

November 5, 2020

Four-time Giller Prize-nominated writer and visual artist Shani Mootoo will appear in an online conversation with another of Canada’s best-loved writers, Jane Urquhart.

Archived

October 26, 2020

The Koffler presents an online conversation with African-American, Jewish food writer, culinary and cultural historian and educator Michael W. Twitty.

Archived

October 21, 2020

Online conversations with the writers of Penguin Teen Canada’s Pocket Change Collective, a series of small books with big ideas by today’s leading youth activists and artists.

Archived

October 6, 2020

In This is What I Know About Art, arts writer and co-editor of Black Futures Kimberly Drew shows us that art and protest are inextricably linked.

Archived

September 29, 2020

In The New Queer Conscience, Voices4 Founder and LGBTQIA+ activist Adam Eli offers a candid and compassionate introduction to queer responsibility.

Archived

December 2, 2020

to December 6, 2020

Koffler Couture returns with The Curated Collection, featuring a smaller, curated collection of designer handbags, wallets and scarves in an online auction.

Archived

September 1, 2020

to September 15, 2020

An online art sale and fundraiser featuring 30 artworks by 32 artists who have been engaged with the Koffler Gallery and its audiences.

Related Exhibitions

Gallery

April 17, 2023

to November 12, 2023

This international exhibition is brought together with assistance from Canadian architect Douglas Birkenshaw and through architectural photography by celebrated Dutch photographer Iwan Baan.

Gallery

November 2, 2022

to March 5, 2023

Artist nichola feldman-kiss explores global migration and flights from homelands in a multidisciplinary exhibition.

Gallery

December 3, 2021

to February 13, 2022

The Spiders and the Bees is a survey exhibition by French-Canadian, Venice based artist François Xavier Saint-Pierre, including his most recent body of work following a residency at the Villa Medici in Rome.

Gallery

September 25, 2021

to November 14, 2021

Sameer Farooq’s major solo exhibition that tackles the fraught and violent histories of anthropological and encyclopaedic museum collections, their colonial origins, structures and impulses.

Gallery

September 23, 2020

to November 15, 2020

Vancouver artist Carol Sawyer assembles a fiction as truthfully as possible to tell a needed story.

Virtual

August 18, 2020

to November 30, 2020

A Koffler Digital exhibition that uses food, and the cultures that surround it, to examine our relationships to one another, society and the world at large.

Virtual

July 6, 2020

to September 30, 2020

In collaboration with the Koffler Centre of the Arts, Youth Leaders from Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital took part in a unique photography project during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Virtual

July 4, 2016

to July 5, 2021

Self-Loving Jew by Jonathan Rotsztain is a series of autobiographical comics claiming a secular, cultural Jewish identity on Koffler Digital.

Virtual

April 13, 2020

to May 3, 2021

Eleventh House is a Koffler Digital project exploring the rituals of astrology reading and horoscope writing.

Virtual

November 4, 2019

to April 29, 2022

Thresholds is a new Koffler.Digital podcast hosted and produced by Maya Bedward in collaboration with members of Holland Bloorview’s Youth Advisory Council. 
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