An anniversary exhibition - this is a recreation of the important 1953 exhibition "Abstracts at Home" held at the Robert Simpson Company Limited, Toronto. Abstract works of art were exhibited with furniture in seven room displays. The seven participating artists were Kazuo Nakamura, Willliam Ronald, Ray Mead, Alexandra Luke, Jack Bush, Oscar Cahén and Tom Hodgson. They would go on to the organize Painters Eleven along with fellow artists Jock Macdonald , Hortense Gordon, Walter Yarwood and Harold Town.The works in the exhibition are largely from the Gallery's permanent collection.

Joan Murray, an independent curator and art historian, is considered one of the most accessible of Canadian art writers and has studied and exhibited Tom Thomson for four decades. Since the late 1960s, she has been a curator of several institutions, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, and director of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa (1974-99) and the McMichael Canadian Art Gallery in Kleinburg (2005-6). Murray was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy in 1992 and has been honoured with the Senior Award from the Association of Cultural Executives, the Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries and the Order of Ontario. She lives in Toronto, Ontario

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