The Varley Art Gallery of Markham and the McKay Art Centre sit a few doors apart on Main Street Unionville, and this fall they keep different schedules. The Varley is holding one paired exhibition from September 26 to December 20. The McKay hangs a new artist or group every Wednesday and takes the work down after Sunday. If you walk down from 610 Bullock Drive on Saturdays, the street can show you something different each week until the same date in December.
Both buildings belong to the same institution, and both carry the Varley name in some form. The Varley Art Gallery is at 216 Main Street Unionville. The McKay Art Centre is at 197 Main Street, in an 1850s house that was once the home of Group of Seven member F. H. Varley.
The gallery puts on curated exhibitions that run for months. The house works on a rental system: artists and artist groups book the ground floor one week at a time, install on Tuesday, open to the public Wednesday through Sunday, and take down on Monday. The McKay's fall schedule began the week of September 15. Thirteen bookings fall between the week the current Varley shows opened and the week they close.
That gives the two buildings different jobs. At the Varley, you can go back to the same work a second or third time. A stop at the McKay shows who is painting locally this week.
The Main Gallery and Intro Gallery hold I Think This Means I Can Fly by Anique Jordan, curated by Essence Harden and organized by the Varley. According to the gallery, Jordan works across photography, sculpture and performance, and the show looks at "how truth is made, inherited, and given form," treating ancestral narratives, dreams and spiritual knowledge as ways of telling the truth.
In the Collections Gallery, Framing Identity is the companion show, curated by Anik Glaude. It includes photographic work by Joi T. Arcand, Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Anique Jordan, Esmaa Mohamoud, John Reeves and Katherine Takpannie. All of it comes from the collections of the Varley and Markham Public Art. One piece is a 2025 Arcand print that the Varley-McKay Art Foundation of Markham bought this year with funds from the K. M. Hunter Foundation. Part of the show is work the city has acquired recently.
Admission is free. The gallery is open Tuesday to Friday from noon to 4 PM and Saturday and Sunday from 10 AM to 5 PM, and it is closed Mondays. The weekday window is short, so for most people a visit to the Varley means a weekend.
Here is what remains on the McKay calendar after this post goes up. All dates are for 2026.
| Week | Exhibiting at the McKay Art Centre |
|---|---|
| October 28 to November 1 | Les Olson |
| November 4 to 8 | Mahtab Alavi |
| November 11 to 15 | Edmund Prior |
| November 18 to 22 | Trinity Home Market |
| November 25 to 29 | Korean Watercolour Group of Artists |
| December 2 to 6 | Markham Group of Artists |
| December 9 to 13 | Trinity Home Market |
| December 16 to 20 | Bruce Song and Jessica Zhang |
The same names come back across the season. Trinity Home Market is booked three times this fall, counting a week that ended October 4. The Markham Group of Artists had the house October 14 to 18 and returns December 2. Yuliya Marusina showed in September and again the week of October 21.
On hours, the gallery says McKay exhibitions are "normally open to the public Wednesday through Sunday" and closed Mondays and Tuesdays unless the listing says otherwise. Each exhibitor runs and supervises their own week and gets a key, so they can choose to stay open longer. Treat the McKay as a Wednesday-to-Sunday stop and expect the exact hours to change from week to week.
The Varley's free public programs are set on Saturdays, and each one lands during a McKay week. That means one walk down to Main Street covers both buildings.
We've written before about fall on Main Street from The Hunt Club's front door and about where to eat along the strip. Any of those Saturdays pairs easily with either one.
The two buildings share more than a name. The Varley's weekly Life Drawing Drop-in Studio is co-presented with the Markham Group of Artists, the same group booked into the McKay for December 2 to 6. Sessions run Wednesdays from 5 to 8 PM through November 25. They are non-instructional, with a clothed model in long poses, cost $25 each and are open to ages 18 and up. You can register or drop in, and you bring your own materials, including an easel. There is no session on the first Wednesday of the month, so November 4 is skipped.
Wednesday is also the day each new McKay exhibition opens. On a Wednesday evening you can see the new week's work at 197 Main Street and then go draw at 216 with members of a group that shows at the McKay itself.
For one-day sessions instead of a weekly commitment, the Varley lists these November and December workshops:
If you have younger visitors in December, the Fluid Art Family Workshop on December 13 is designed for families with children on the autism spectrum. It runs from 1 to 4 PM for ages 9 and up and costs $100 per family, with up to two participants. Winter-break camp days for ages 4 to 12 start December 21. Full days cost $114, and the half days on December 24 and 31 cost $49.
Both schedules end on the same Sunday. I Think This Means I Can Fly and Framing Identity close December 20. Bruce Song and Jessica Zhang have the last McKay booking of 2026, December 16 to 20. The McKay is taking exhibition bookings for 2027. The Varley's posted list does not yet show what follows its current shows.
Between this week and December 20, there are eight McKay weeks and three free Saturday programs at the Varley, the last of them an evening drop-in on December 12. If you want to see Jordan's show twice, plan a weekend in early November and another after the Curator's Corner on November 21. On each trip, stop at 197 Main Street to see who has the house that week.
At Walker Parker Real Estate, we keep track of the Main Street calendar because a lot of daily life at The Hunt Club happens a short walk down the road. If you're thinking about what a home at 610 Bullock Drive means for your own weekends, or about selling the one you have, we'd be glad to talk it through. Book a Consultation with our team.
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