The Varley Art Gallery of Markham has announced its winter season, and both new exhibitions look at the same subject from different angles: how museums collect, display and explain the objects in their care.

Sameer Farooq: The Fairest Order in the World and Sketching the Past open on Saturday, Feb. 7, at the gallery at 216 Main St. in Unionville. Both run until Sunday, May 3.

A solo show on museums and restitution

Farooq is a Toronto-based artist who was born in Cape Breton and is of Pakistani and Ugandan Indian descent. His exhibition uses sculptures and images to explore provenance, repatriation and repair, and the colonial origins of art and anthropological museums. The gallery calls it a "deeply poetic space" to reflect on the "fraught and violent histories" of those institutions.

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.

— Varley Art Gallery of Markham

The exhibition is curated by Mona Filip, chief curator at Contemporary Calgary, and was organized and circulated by Dalhousie Art Gallery.

Varley at the ROM

The second show, in the Collections Gallery, turns to the artist the gallery is named for. Sketching the Past gathers drawings Frederick Varley made while wandering the halls of Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum in the 1950s. He sketched fossils, sculptures and dinosaur skeletons in the natural history and art and culture galleries, and was especially drawn to the Chinese collection and the dinosaur halls.

Historical photographs in the show reveal how the museum arranged its objects at the time. The gallery says the drawings invite visitors to consider how collection practices, display methods and storytelling at museums have changed since then. The exhibition is curated by Anik Glaude.

Opening reception

The public is invited to a free opening reception on Feb. 7 from 2 to 4 p.m. No registration is needed. The afternoon includes in-gallery talks by Farooq and Glaude, an immersive dance performance choreographed by Zoe Kwan, hands-on art activities for all ages and light refreshments.

More programs tied to Sketching the Past are planned for the spring, including a hands-on dinosaur activity on April 18 and a Curator's Corner talk on April 19.

If you go

  • Where: Varley Art Gallery of Markham, 216 Main St., Unionville

  • When: Feb. 7 to May 3, 2026

  • Hours: Tuesday to Friday, noon to 4 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; closed Mondays

  • Admission: free

  • Information: 905-477-7000, ext. 3261

The winter shows follow the gallery's fall exhibitions, which closed in January, and start a busy few weeks on Main Street Unionville, where the gallery also hosts LunarFest GTA later in February.