Straying from commercial auction-house curation, Gallery Arcturus prioritizes life-transforming experiences over market trends

By Riddhi Dhingra

At 80 Gerrard Street East, just a few steps away from the Toronto Metropolitan University campus, Gallery Arcturus functions as a quiet rebellion to traditional art markets. 

Most modern galleries double themselves as high-stakes auction houses, but Gallery Arcturus is defined by the refusal to sell. It is a completely non-commercial gallery housed in a renovated building that’s always free to enter. 

For curator Deborah Harris, this mandated a not-for-sale concept as the foundation of the gallery space. Though Harris curated the gallery, it is funded by a charity, which allows it to maintain a focus on exploration over profit. 

The decision to remain non-commercial strips away the transactional nature of viewing art. “It’s a very different way of taking in art when you don’t have those kinds of conditions, of having to pay,” she said.

Without any pressure to conform to commercial appeal, the gallery ends up avoiding market trends. “Once work is commercial, you’re trying to receive your direction from outside of yourself, right?” Harris said. “You’re looking at what sells. What’s fashionable, what’s possible, what do people want? So it’s a totally different dictate.” 

At Gallery Arcturus, the mission is more about exploring what it is to be human.

Harris’ philosophy is rooted in dissatisfaction with contemporary art scenes, which she describes as being pretentious and inaccessible. For Harris, the modern art world has become an inner circle defined by exorbitant prices. “I think that it’s very elitist,” she observed.

Harris believes that society has lost a shared visual language when it comes to art, regarding the personalization of contemporary art into different languages unique to artists’ own personal narratives.

Gallery Arcturus seeks to return to a time when art was life-transforming for the viewer. Harris’ priority is the visitor, not the accolade of the artist. “The most important thing is actually to create space for the viewer,” she said.  “We’re not creating a space which highlights the artist or tries to make them famous, we’re actually creating a space in which the viewer can receive something from it.”

The gallery’s layout is significant to its mission. Exhibitions are spread across different rooms in the building. Each space ends up offering various environments for the artworks. Exhibitions are housed in the Drawing Room and Collage Gallery, as well as the riveting Black Room, where the ceiling, walls and floors are painted entirely black. 

Harris describes her curation as more of an organic inquiry where the “art itself talks to each other.” This process is deeply personal; she ends up testing the space herself by moving through it repeatedly to understand the impression it ends up leaving.

“You have to be uncertain to really be [open] to possibility,” she said. “The nature of possibility is you don’t know what it is.” The result is a space which visitors often describe as an oasis or sanctuary.

The gallery offers an environment where visitors are encouraged to stay for multiple hours without any sort of social obligation. The gallery also houses a small library, which ends up encouraging visitors to linger for longer. That space allows visitors to take a deeper dive into visual history, turning a standard gallery visit into an emotional long-form experience.

Harris often finds it shocking how deeply people respond to the gallery. “Nothing is required of you except to receive it and find a way to move through it and be comfortable,” she said.

There is no profit-driven agenda or sales staff. The interaction between the art and the viewer is entirely private, which facilitates a level of concentration difficult to find in typical retail or public spaces. The gallery’s guest book serves as a record of how this environment affects the public. Harris notes that this anonymous activity allows people to have honest interactions with the work. 

Despite the intimidating historic exterior, posters and street signs have managed to grasp the attention of students from the nearby campus. Ultimately, Harris is hopeful that the gallery will spark curiosity and can offer magical spaces which exist outside of the confines of the commercial world.