Toronto's private gallery sector occupies a distinctive position within Canada's cultural infrastructure. Over several decades it has matured into an active commercial and critical ecosystem that supports artists across career stages, engages a growing collector base, and maintains meaningful relationships with institutions at home and abroad. While the city's non-commercial flagships — the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, and The Power Plant — are the most publicly visible, it is the constellation of privately operated galleries that does much of the sustained, day-to-day work of representing artists, placing works, and generating the dialogue that animates a functioning art market.
What follows is an overview of key commercial galleries active in the Toronto scene as of early 2026, together with information about current programming, notable exhibitions, and relevant context for those visiting from or working within other art institutions.
It is worth noting the broader context into which this activity sits. The fourth edition of the Toronto Biennial of Art is scheduled to run from 26 September to 20 December 2026, curated by New York-based Allison Glenn. Glenn, whose previous work includes the 2021 exhibition Promise, Witness, Remembrance at Louisville's Speed Art Museum, has noted the city's position at the edge of the Great Lakes waterway as a likely influence on her curatorial framework. The Biennial's institutional partners for 2026 include the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. This city-wide event, which commissions new work from artists across Canada and internationally, provides significant activation energy for the private gallery sector around it.
Mira Godard Gallery
Founded in 1962, Mira Godard Gallery is among the longest-established commercial galleries in Canada. Operating across three floors in Yorkville, the gallery focuses on contemporary Canadian and international art and maintains an inventory of paintings, sculpture, works on paper, original prints, and photographs. Its program has historically drawn on both established modern Canadian figures and living artists, and the gallery has played a consistent role in placing major works with private and institutional collectors.
The gallery's most recently documented programme included a presentation of works by Alex Colville, Tom Forrestall, Rockwell Kent, Christopher Pratt, and Mary Pratt, running through January 2025.
Olga Korper Gallery
Established in 1973, Olga Korper Gallery is one of the most longstanding contemporary galleries in Canada. The gallery occupies a loft-style space in the city's west end and represents mid-career to senior artists working in a range of media. Its founder, Olga Korper, has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Art Dealers Association of Canada, and the gallery has continued its programming under her direction with her daughter, Taiga Korper Bentley, now involved in its leadership — Korper Bentley served as a juror for Artist Project 2026.
The gallery's recent programme has been varied and consistent. Tim Whiten's solo exhibition Transpire ran from November to December 2025. This was followed by Reminds Me of Home, a group exhibition presented from January to February 2026. Earlier in 2025, the gallery showed Kelly Mark's Everything & Nothing in October, Shabnam K. Ghazi's Dear You, Dear Me (Mailbox Series) in September, and John McEwen's Field Notes in a summer slot.
https://www.olgakorpergallery.com
COOPER COLE
Founded in 2011, COOPER COLE operates two adjacent gallery spaces at 1134 and 1136 Dupont Street in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood. The gallery presents approximately fifteen exhibitions per year across both spaces and participates in major international art fairs. Its programme focuses on Canadian and international artists working in painting, sculpture, photography, textiles, and multimedia, with a deliberate emphasis on inclusivity, underrepresented perspectives, and community engagement. Several of the gallery's artists have exhibited at or been collected by major North American and European institutions.
The gallery's most recently documented programme included a two-person exhibition of new paintings, wall works, and sculptures by Antonia Kuo and Douglas Rieger, alongside a solo presentation by Timothy Yanick Hunter titled Antecedent Conditions For A Landslide. Both shows ran from November 2025 into January 2026. Previous exhibitions in 2025 featured works by Nathalie du Pasquier, Ed Baynard, and Clare Rojas. The gallery also hosted a collaborative presentation with Vancouver-based gallery Unit 17 as part of a spirit of inter-gallery exchange.
COOPER COLE is open Thursday to Saturday, noon to five, and admission is free.
Clint Roenisch Gallery
Clint Roenisch opened in 2003 and after a decade on Queen Street West relocated to a larger warehouse-style space at 190 Saint Helens Avenue. The gallery represents artists across several generations working in photography, sculpture, drawing, painting, film, and installation. It has introduced a number of international artists to Canadian audiences for the first time, among them Roger Ballen (Johannesburg) and Marcel van Eeden (Zurich). Works by Roenisch Gallery artists have entered collections at and been exhibited by institutions including MoMA, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the National Gallery of Canada, the Guggenheim, and the Stedelijk Museum, among others.
Recent programming has included The Eden Project in early 2025, featuring new textile and embroidery works. Prior solo and group exhibitions in 2024 and 2025 included work by Harold Klunder, Anna Torma, and Luis Mora, as well as Anonymous Was A Woman, a group exhibition of new painting by women artists organised by Brit Pruiksma and drawing on twelve artists from outside Canada. The current exhibition (as of March 2026) features Jasmin Bilodeau.
Susan Hobbs Gallery
Susan Hobbs Gallery has operated from its two-storey building on Tecumseth Street in downtown Toronto since 1993. The gallery occupies a central position in the city's contemporary art landscape and maintains a roster of artists ranging from emerging to established, all working in critically engaged conceptual and material-based practices. The gallery's commitment to introducing international artists to Canadian audiences, alongside its advocacy for its represented artists internationally, has made it a consistent reference point for curators and institutions working across the country.
Among the gallery's represented artists are Krista Buecking, Ian Carr-Harris, Didier Courbot, Patrick Howlett, Oliver Husain, Liz Magor, Sandra Meigs, Derek Sullivan, Zin Taylor, Althea Thauberger, Colette Whiten, Shirley Wiitasalo, and Kevin Yates, among others.
The gallery opened 2026 with a solo exhibition by Patrick Howlett, titled Animal Brains Animal Eyes, running from January 15 to February 21, 2026. Howlett's paintings — worked in distemper, egg tempera, watercolour, shellac, oil stick, metal leaf, and oil paint — extend his ongoing investigation into the indeterminate nature of abstraction, drawing on humoral theory and early Renaissance illustration as structural reference points. Architectural and domestic spaces become frameworks for an interplay between interiority and exteriority, familiarity and estrangement.
Susan Hobbs Gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and by appointment.
Stephen Bulger Gallery
Stephen Bulger Gallery has operated since 1995 and has established itself as the primary Canadian commercial destination specialising in photography. The gallery maintains an inventory of over 30,000 photographs, spanning historical Canadian works and international modern and contemporary photography, and represents several estates alongside leading contemporary photographers. It provides appraisal services and actively assists collectors at all levels of experience in building their holdings. Admission is free.
The gallery's 2026 programme opened with a solo exhibition by Joan Lyons (American, b. 1937, Brooklyn), running January 10 to February 28, 2026 — the occasion for the gallery's announcement of its formal representation of Lyons. The exhibition presented works spanning six decades of her practice in printmaking, photography, and artists' books. Lyons has been a significant figure in the Rochester photography scene since the 1960s and her work encompasses antiquated photographic processes, photograms, offset lithography, photo-quilt making, pinhole photography, and xerography. A guided tour of the exhibition with the artist took place on the opening day. The gallery's earlier autumn 2025 programme included Canadian Photographs: 1950 – Present, a group exhibition, and a solo show by Sarah Anne Johnson in September.
Stephen Bulger Gallery is located at 1356 Dundas Street West.
Bau-Xi Gallery
Bau-Xi Gallery operates with locations in both Toronto and Vancouver, making it one of the few galleries in Canada with a sustained bi-coastal commercial presence. The gallery focuses on painting and photography by Canadian and international artists and has a reputation as one of the country's more established commercial venues for mid-career work. It serves an active collector base across both cities.
In early 2026, the gallery drew attention to Fantastic Landscapes: Beyond the Ordinary, a collection of works from the Estate of Frederick Hagan, on display until March 22, 2026 at the Peel Art Gallery, Museum and Archives — a reminder of the broader institutional lives that works passing through gallery hands can eventually lead. The gallery's Vancouver location has been hosting an inaugural solo exhibition by Montreal-based artist Ian Stone, in which Stone draws on everyday objects to explore questions of gender, queer history, and contemporary perception.
Birch Contemporary
Birch Contemporary at 129 Tecumseth Street has operated across a series of iterations — Robert Birch Gallery, Birch Libralato, and its current form — and represents artists in Canada and internationally across painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and installation. The gallery has a long-standing relationship with a number of its artists; its programme with Micah Lexier, for instance, marked their twenty-fifth year of collaboration with his most recently documented exhibition, Five Shapes, which assembled contributions from over two dozen artists and fabricators. The gallery's represented artists include Cathy Daley, Martin Golland, Catherine Heard, Will Gorlitz, Jaan Poldaas, Ed Pien, Balint Zsako, and others.
https://www.birchcontemporary.com
Spence Gallery
Spence Gallery operates by appointment and presents work from a curated roster of over thirty emerging, mid-career, and established Canadian artists working in abstract, figurative, surreal, and mixed media forms. The gallery serves collectors looking for accessible entry points into the primary market, with works ranging in price from $500 to $5,000. It participates in art fairs, including Intersect Palm Springs in 2026, extending the reach of its artists beyond the Toronto market.
Art Fairs and the Broader Marketplace
Art Toronto, Canada's established annual art fair, continues to serve as an important gathering point for private galleries and collectors. The 2025 edition introduced Arte Sur, a new section devoted to Latin American galleries and curated by Karen Huber, alongside Platform Talks and Curated Tours. The fair draws participants from Buenos Aires, Frankfurt, London, Mexico City, New York, Santiago, Sydney, and elsewhere, providing Toronto's private galleries with a mechanism for connecting their programmes with international collecting audiences.
Artist Project returns to the Enercare Centre from March 26 to 29, 2026, presenting over 250 juried independent artists in a format that sits between a fair and an exhibition. The 2026 edition introduces a themed section, The Art of the Game, timed to align with Toronto's role as a sport host city in the coming months. Taiga Korper Bentley of Olga Korper Gallery served on the selection jury alongside artist Winnie Truong and curator Trevor Twells. The fair includes the Untapped Emerging Artists Competition, which provides free exhibition space for students, recent graduates, and self-taught artists.
https://arttoronto.ca (Art Toronto)
https://artistproject.ca (Artist Project)
Observations
Toronto's private gallery landscape in early 2026 reflects a sector that is neither static nor in obvious distress. The galleries represented here span several decades of operation, ranging from Mira Godard's more than sixty years to COOPER COLE's fifteen, and collectively demonstrate an appetite for programming that connects local artists and collectors with international currents. Photography, in particular, has a notable concentration of commercial support through Stephen Bulger. Contemporary Canadian painting continues to find consistent representation across multiple spaces.
The presence of the Toronto Biennial on the 2026 calendar — its most extensive edition to date, with institutional partnerships at the AGO and the University of Toronto — will inevitably shape the commercial and critical conversation for much of the year. Private galleries tend to benefit from the increased collector and institutional traffic that a biennial produces, though the relationship between event-driven programming and sustained gallery activity remains, as it does in other biennial cities, one worth monitoring.
For visiting professionals, the Tecumseth Street corridor — home to Susan Hobbs, Birch Contemporary, and others within a short distance of one another — offers a productive route through several of the city's most considered gallery programmes in a single visit. The west end neighbourhoods around Dundas West and Dupont Street provide another cluster, including Stephen Bulger, Clint Roenisch, and COOPER COLE.