Helen Elsie Elizabeth Gardiner[1] CM (née McMinn) (July 18, 1938 – July 22, 2008) was a Canadian philanthropist and co-founder of the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto, Ontario.
Helen Gardiner was born in 1938 in the Northern mining town of Kirkland Lake to a working family.
[2] In 1974, she began attending York University as a mature student, and in 1979, she travelled to London, England to study at Christie's Education.
[4] Between 1976 and 1984, George and Helen built a distinctive collection of approximately 1,200 objects in a few carefully selected areas that were collected in depth: ancient Central and South American vessels and figures; tin glazed pottery of the Italian Renaissance; seventeenth-century English pottery; and eighteenth-century European porcelain.
[5] In 1981, the Ontario government unanimously passed Bill 183 to establish the George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art as an independent, public institution.