There’s no entry cost or coat check required to peruse the Dundas West Open Air Museum
The vibrant murals stretching from Ossington to Lansdowne avenues aren’t random — curators have commissioned the artworks as part of the Dundas West Open Air Museum.
“We’re not just painting beautiful things. We’re painting a narrative,” said Rodrigo Ardiles Gamboa, the outdoor museum’s creative director.
The 35 murals, created by local and international artists, depict themes including social justice, human rights and Indigenous land acknowledgement.
Both the Little Portugal Toronto BIA and the Dundas West Open Air Museum organize two free guided tours of the murals on the last Saturday of each month. Outside those tours, anyone walking along Dundas Street West can take in, and even touch, the colourful streetside artwork.
For Ardiles Gamboa, the murals and their differing designs and artistic influences complement one another and bring vibrancy to the popular neighbourhood.
He said the intersection of Brock Avenue and Dundas Street West, where there are murals by the artist Vhils from Portugal and artist INTI from Chile, is like “having Monet and Rembrandt together in the same street.”
The mural by Vhils (whose real name is Alexandre Farto) is titled Scratching the Surface. It honours the Portuguese immigrant women who, while working as Toronto’s “cleaning ladies,” unionized in the late 1970s and began strike action to gain labour rights.
Meanwhile, just across the street, the mural by INTI (whose real name is Inti Castro), titled Naciones, celebrates the presence of the Latin American community in the Dundas West neighbourhood since the 1970s.
“All of this is driven by love,” Ardiles Gamboa said of the murals. “If you don’t have love, you don’t have anything.”
Recent murals added to the museum’s collection includes the one titled 8th Fire, which artists said portrays a 1,200-year-old Indigenous prophecy that foretold First Nations communities and settlers one day coming together to achieve unity. The mural was created by Philip Cote of the Moose Deer Point First Nation and Toronto-based designer Pam Lostracco.
Although the museum was officially established about five years ago, Ardiles Gamboa said unaffiliated murals have been popping up on Dundas Street West for over twenty-five years now.
The museum’s open-air initiative reflects the International Council of Museums’ revised 2022 definition of “what a museum can be,” according to Maggie Hutcheson, a professor at the University of Toronto’s faculty of information.
Hutcheson said there is a “focus on public access” and “community participation” at the core of the Dundas West Open Air Museum, something not always found in traditional museums.
Protecting outdoor murals
Ardiles Gamboa said there is, however, one constant trouble with displaying artwork publicly through streetside murals: graffiti.
“The vandalism on top of the murals is a constant challenge,” he said.
To tackle this, Ardiles Gamboa said their team maintains relationships with local taggers and hosts open conversations about their participation in the neighbourhood’s artistic community.
In the event that one of the museum’s murals is vandalized, Ardiles Gamboa said staff will clean and restore the artwork to “show community resiliency.”
Ardiles Gamboa said the museum relies on grant applications to stay funded, free and accessible to the Toronto public, unlike other museums in the city, including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto.
“It’s an overwhelming mission to balance the dialogue between property owners, taggers, street artists, municipalities and overall general governance,” he said. “That’s what we do. We work like a film commission. We’re a mural commission.”
Credits: Mariela Torroba Hennigen Jun 28, 2025 9:00 AM
https://www.torontotoday.ca/local/arts-culture/dundas-west-open-air-museum-colourful-murals-first-ever-10876156
