Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto, Canada

The Textile Museum of Canada, located Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a Canadian museum dedicated to the collection, exhibition, and documentation of textiles.

Dedicated to expanding knowledge, creativity and awareness, the Textile Museum of Canada (TMC) plays a leading role in Canada and beyond facilitating access to material culture as well as to interdisciplinary practices that embrace art, design and fashion. As an international repository of cultural heritage with a collection encompassing more than 13,000 artifacts, archaeological to contemporary, the TMC is uniquely positioned to speak to evolving experiences in a global context as well as to our increasingly global communities. Located in Toronto’s downtown core, the Museum addresses the nuances of cultures and identities through a dynamic exhibition program based on our collection as well as the work of Canadian and international contemporary artists.

The Textile Museum of Canada was founded as the Canadian Museum of Carpets and Textiles in 1975 by Max Allen and Simon Waegemaekers. Located above an ice cream shop in Mirvish Village the museum’s collection was initially based on textiles collected during business trips. The museum relocated to its current location as in 1989.

Since its incorporation, the Textile Museum of Canada has garnered wide acclaim for the quality and social impact of its collections, exhibitions and programming and for its role as a renowned incubator for artistic and scholarly research and practice that provides a unique platform for the generation and exploration of new ideas. The TMC is a leader in digital heritage; at once “high touch” and “high tech,” the Museum integrates traditional practices with cutting-edge innovation to create opportunities for meaningful life-long learning.

The Textile Museum of Canada has a permanent collection of more than 13,000 textiles from around the world. Covering 2,000 years of textile history, the collection includes fabrics, ceremonial cloths, garments, carpets, quilts and related artifacts.

The museum presents curated exhibitions of contemporary work and historic and ethnographic artifacts drawn from its own and others’ collections. It is home to the H.N. Pullar Library, a reference collection of material focused on non-industrial textiles. The museum also offers lectures, round-table discussions, workshops, music and dance performances, hands-on demonstrations, school programs and public tours.

Canadian Tapestry: The Fabric of Cultural Diversity, one of the museum’s digitization projects, provides online access to 7,000 artifacts and a second phase will provide access to an additional 3,500 items.