Public Art
Xiaojing Yan, The Underground Sun, 2025–ongoing. Aerial view of living installation at Milliken Mills Park. Courtesy of the artist.
Markham Public Art
Markham’s Public Art Program began in 2003 and became official in 2012, when the City adopted two Public Art Policies—one for public (municipal) projects and one for private projects. Since 2013, the City has commissioned seven permanent public artworks and supported many community art projects with the City’s Public Realm Department as well as cultural partners across Markham. In 2019, City Council approved the Public Art Master Plan 2020–2024 and an Implementation Plan in 2020, which together set a clear direction for how public art will grow with the city.
Today, guided by the Public Art Master Plan, the Public Art Program has expanded far beyond commissioning permanent artworks. It now includes city-wide and neighbourhood projects, temporary artworks, artist residencies, and collaborations with local organizations, schools, and community groups. We partner with universities to create research-based public art, teaching, and learning opportunities for students and residents. The program supports art along streetscapes, in parks and trails, in civic buildings, and in natural and environmentally sensitive areas, including projects that explore ecology, local histories, diverse identities, and material culture. These varied initiatives are all designed to activate Markham’s rich cultural heritage and natural landscapes.
Across everything we do, Markham Public Art is guided by the three main goals identified in the Public Art Master Plan:
- To inspire people to live, work, visit, and invest in Markham through meaningful cultural experiences;
- To celebrate the City’s diverse cultures, identities, and histories from many points of view;
- To strengthen connections between residents and Markham’s built and natural environments, from historic main streets to ecological corridors and protected landscapes.
Rooted in collaboration, innovation, ecology, and community engagement, Markham Public Art brings artists, residents, and partners together to imagine the city’s future.
News
Markham Public Art Curator, Yan Wu has received the Changemaker BIPOC award, one of three prestigious annual Personnel honours, given out as part of the 48th Annual GOG (Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries) Awards.
The GOG Awards celebrate the outstanding achievement, artistic merit, and excellence of arts institutions and professionals in the public art gallery sector.
Markham Public Art’s temporary project Lost and Found (2023–24), a site-responsive artwork by artists Holly Ward and Kevin Schmidt, curated by Markham’s Public Art Curator Yan Wu and co-produced with the Varley Art Gallery of Markham, won the Creative City Impact Award: Public Art–Sustainability at the 25th Creative City Network Summit in October 2025.
Lost and Found unfolded along Markham’s Rouge Valley Trail. The jury praised the project’s unique approach to contemporary public art, highlighting it as “an example of how we can celebrate everyday presence and civic participation over spectacle.”
Artist Xiaojing Yan’s living installation The Underground Sun, now on view at Milliken Mills Park, has been featured in CBC Arts.
With construction moving forward on Main Street Unionville’s restoration, artist Nestor Kruger’s public artwork Little Creatures is now being installed along the street and will be completed in 2026.
Songs to the Sun (2023), an eight-channel sound installation by artist Scott Rogers, originally commissioned for Nuit Blanche Toronto 2023 and now part of the Markham Public Art Indoor Circulation Collection, is currently installed in the Great Hall of the Markham Civic Centre, designed by renowned Canadian architect Arthur Erickson.
Bringing together the calls and songs of more than 900 bird species from around the world, the work creates an immersive acoustic environment that animates the winter garden envisioned by Erickson.
Visit and experience Songs to the Sun during the Civic Centre’s regular business hours: Monday to Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM.
- Outdoor Collection and Projects
Permanent Collection
- Cloudflower: Reflecting Community (2016) by Douglas Walker, Cornell Community Centre and Library
- Gambrel Journey (2015) by kipjones, Markham Museum
- Quarry (2016) by Mary Anne Barkhouse, Toogood Pond
- Monument to William Berczy (2016) by Marlene Hilton Moore, Berczy Square
- Monument to Benjamin Thorne (2017) by Les Drysdale, Thornhill Community Centre and Library
- Top Garden (2023) by Guild, Aaniin Community Centre and Library
- Living Light (2023) by Jill Anholt, Downtown Markham
Special Projects
- Henderson Bridge Mural (2013)
Artists: Andrea End, Robin Hesse, Matthew Moloney, Glen Ou, and Susan Weisz
Mentored by Katharine Harvey - Shifting Landscapes – Henderson Bridge Mural (2015)
Artist: James Ruddle, with assistance from students and alumni of Markham high schools - For the Love of Sports and Art (2016)
Created by Bill Crothers Secondary School students
Location: Pan Am Centre, Markham - The Underground Sun (2025–ongoing)
Artist: Xiaojing Yan
Location: Milliken Mills Park
- Public Art Competitions
- Public Programming
Our Park 2022: A Community Art Project Grant
Our Park 2022: A Community Art Project Grant was a pilot community art project grant co-produced by Markham Public Art and the York Region Arts Council to bring free, artist-led programs to parks in neighbourhoods with limited access to public art. The first edition featured Carnival of the Arts by dancer and choreographer Zoe Kwan. This site-specific festival at Ada MacKenzie Park included workshops, performances, and collaborations with local artists and cultural practitioners.
Our Park 2025: Learning from Mushroom
Our Park 2025: Learning from Mushroom, co-produced with the Varley Art Gallery of Markham through its Community Artist in Residence program, brought artist-led programming to Milliken Mills Park and sites across the city. This year’s edition featured Xiaojing Yan’s The Underground Sun, workshops with Jason Logan (From Forest to Sky) and Annyen Lam (Paper and Wind), and the public kite-flying event Pictures of the Sky, exploring what mycelial growth can teach us about community, ecology, and collective creativity.
Multi-sensory Birding for Beginners with Scott Rogers
Filmed on November 2, 2024, this short video captures highlights from a two-hour birding walk led by artist and birder Scott Rogers in Markham. Designed for participants of all ages, the tour invited beginners to engage with local wildlife through hearing, movement, and presence—expanding birdwatching beyond sight alone. Blending art and ecology, the walk opened up new ways of sensing and connecting with the natural world. This event was part of the public programming for Songs to the Sun, an eight-channel sound installation by artist Scott Rogers, on view in the Great Hall of the Markham Civic Centre.
- Past Projects
Double Gazebo (2021) by Native Art Department International (NADI)
Double Gazebo is a sculptural installation by the Indigenous artist collective NADI, composed of two intersecting gazebo forms that created a shared space functioning as both inside and outside. The work challenged conventional expectations of Indigenous art and prompted reflection on how we gather, occupy land, and negotiate social space, with two variants presented, one in the courtyard of the Varley Art Gallery of Markham and another at MOCA Toronto.
Alongside the installation, the virtual public program Walk East for Sunrise, Walk West for Sunset brought artists and community members together online to explore the artwork through storytelling, reflection, and creative activities.
Lost and Found (2023-2024), Holly Ward and Kevin Schmidt
Lost and Found was a temporary public art project by artists Kevin Schmidt and Holly Ward that unfolded along the Rouge Valley Trail through a series of constructed situations activated by local community groups, musicians, and everyday walkers. The project later transitioned into an exhibition and publication at the Varley Art Gallery, framing these encounters and ephemera as artworks within an evolving visual and material archive.
- Research and Resources
Homework: A Practical Webinar Series on Public Art (2020)
Homework was a three-part webinar series co-produced by Markham Public Art, the Varley Art Gallery of Markham, and ART+PUBLIC UnLtd. The series brought together artists, architects, curators, and public art professionals to share practical knowledge about proposal design, digital rendering, materials, fabrication, and the complexities of producing public art today.
Forms of Rendering
Speakers: David Rokeby, Marcin Kedzior
Moderator: Vivian LeeProposal Design
Speakers: Chloë Catán, David Turnbull
Moderator: Crystal MowryMateriality & Fabrication
Speakers: Myfanwy MacLeod, Catherine Machado
Moderator: Jason LujanBecoming Public Art: Working Models & Case Studies for Art in Public (2020)
Becoming Public Art (2020) was a nine-week online summit co-curated by Markham Public Art and ART+PUBLIC UnLtd. It brought together 46 artists, architects, curators, planners, and producers to share case studies and working models about how public art is produced today. All talks, discussions, and interviews were recorded and are available to watch online.
Our Park: A Lexicon of Park Planning and Design in Markham (2022)
To better understand how parks are imagined and built, Markham Public Art invited three city builders to share their ideas about what makes a successful park. Their insights were brought together into a short video that introduces key terms—such as connectivity, density, design principles, micro-climate, mobility, public art, and urban agriculture—that help explain the many factors shaping how parks work for communities. This video was produced as part of Our Park: A Community Art Project Grant.
we are working (2024)
we are working was an online research project developed by four recent Visual Studies undergraduates at John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto, drawing inspiration from the Rouge Valley Trail to explore artistic research as an open-ended, ecological, and process-based practice. The site gathered experiments, reflections, and methods that rethink how knowledge is formed, shared, and continually transformed.
- Policies and Plans