Former name | McMaster Art Gallery (1967–1994) |
---|---|
Established | 1967 |
Location | McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario |
Coordinates | 43°15′46″N79°55′05″W / 43.26266°N 79.91803°W |
Type | Art museum |
Visitors | 30,000 (2015–16) [1] |
Director | Carol Podedworny |
Public transit access | Hamilton Street Railway: 1 King 5 Delaware |
Website | museum.mcmaster.ca |
The McMaster Museum of Art (MMA) is a non-profit public art gallery at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. The museum is located in the centre of the campus, attached to Mills Memorial Library and close to the McMaster University Student Centre.
McMaster University was founded in 1887, in Toronto, and the art collection began soon after as portraits of presidents and faculty accumulated. [2] A donation of European prints by the Carnegie Institute in the 1930s led to more systematic collecting and programming. By the 1950s, regular art exhibitions were presented on campus in Mills Memorial Library.
In 1967, with the help of the chair of the History Department, Dr. Togo Salmon, the McMaster Art Gallery was given a purpose-built facility in the east wing of Togo Salmon Hall. [3] The gallery moved across campus to its present larger location where it opened to the public under a new name, the McMaster Museum of Art, on June 11, 1994. [2] [4] Five years later the building was renamed the Alvin A. Lee Building in honour of President Emeritus Alvin A. Lee, an influential champion of the MMA, whose efforts helped make the current building possible. [5] [6]
The MMA offers year-round exhibits consisting of historical, modern and contemporary art. In addition to hosting the McMaster University BFA graduating exhibition, the MMA also hosts a variety of public events including lunch and learn sessions, artist talks and workshops. [7] The MMA's Education Gallery serves as a multipurpose room for lectures and study and is home to the museum's modest library made up of books, artist's files and exhibition catalogues. [8]
The MMA belongs to the Ontario Association of Art Galleries reciprocal program, through which members of participating galleries receive free admission to all galleries. [9]
Many faculty members and the Wentworth House Art Committee, established to acquire contemporary Canadian and European art, guided the growth of the collection. Professors Karl Denner (German Department) and George Wallace (Art and Art History Department) are credited with the advancement of the German Expressionist art collection in the early 1960s. [10] [3]
The donation of over 200 European works in the 1980s by Hamilton jeweler Herman Levy O.B.E. put the museum on the map in the Canadian art scene. [11] He later bequeathed $15.25 million to the museum with specific directions that the money must be spent within five years, on acquisition of art of non-North American origins. More recently, the Donald Murray Shepherd Trust provided funds for the purchase of contemporary European art from notable artists such as David Bomberg, Christian Rohlfs, and Natalia Goncharova. [3]
The permanent collection, one of the finest University collections in the country, consists of over 7,000 objects. [12] It includes:
The museum's Paper Centre contains over 4,000 prints, drawings, and watercolours that the public can view by appointment. [14]
The MMA is also home to the Bruce Brace Coin Collection, which consists of coins and medallions from Rome and Greece. [15] The Collection has been the focus of numismatic inquiry aimed at improving what is known about daily life and trade in ancient Rome and Greece from as early as the fifth century BC to the fall of the Roman empire. [16]
McMaster Museum of Art works with faculties across the McMaster University campus. Notable projects/exhibitions using University research and experts include:
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The Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) is an art museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its collection contains nearly 25,000 works of art.
The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips and Marjorie Acker Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the grandson of James H. Laughlin, a banker and co-founder of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company.
The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. The museum's first gallery was opened for public use on November 5, 1895. Over the years the gallery vastly increased in size, with new a new building on Forbes Avenue in 1907. In 1963, the name was officially changed to Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute. The size of the gallery has tripled over time, and it was officially renamed in 1986 to "Carnegie Museum of Art" to clearly indicate it as one of the four Carnegie Museums.
The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art is an art museum located on the campus of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. The permanent collection has over 15,000 objects. Admission is free and open to the general public.
The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. With a collecting history that began in 1755, the museum was formally established in 1882, and now houses over 113,000 works of art ranging from antiquity to the contemporary period. The Princeton University Art Museum dedicates itself to supporting and enhancing the university's goals of teaching, research, and service in fields of art and culture, as well as to serving regional communities and visitors from around the world. Its collections concentrate on the Mediterranean region, Western Europe, Asia, the United States, and Latin America.
Arnaud Maggs was a Canadian artist and photographer. Born in Montreal, Maggs is best known for stark portraits arranged in grid-like arrangements, which illustrate his interest in systems of identification and classification.
Stephen Andrews is a Canadian artist based in Toronto. Born in 1956 in Sarnia, Ontario, Andrews is known for using various media to explore matters such as memory and loss, and technology, and its representations.
Mary Anne Barkhouse is a jeweller and sculptor residing in Haliburton, Ontario, Canada. She belongs to the Nimpkish band of the Kwakiutl First Nation.
Leesa Streifler is a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist and art professor who lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her works have been exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally, and appear in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography.
Natalka Husar is an American-born Canadian painter. She is known for work that draws on aspects of Ukrainian culture and history, the émigré experience, and her feminist concerns.
Ulayu Pingwartok was a Canadian Inuk artist known for drawings of domestic scenes and nature.
Nancy Tousley is a senior art critic, journalist, art writer and independent curator whose practice has included writing for a major daily newspaper, art magazines, and exhibition catalogues.
Matthew Varey is a Canadian artist and educator. He was educated at McMaster University and D'Youville College. He lives and works in Toronto and is currently the Head of Contemporary Art at Etobicoke School of the Arts. In 2016 he was awarded the Canadian Society for Education through Arts' 'Canadian Art Educator of the Year Award '.
Roula Partheniou is a Canadian contemporary artist. She currently practices in Sackville, New Brunswick.
Shelagh Keeley is a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist. She is best known for her drawings and immersive installations, but her practice also includes photography, film, collaborative performances, and artist's books.
Jane Buyers is a Canadian multimedia artist who evokes the human presence and its impulse to manipulate through drawing, sculpture and printmaking. Her investigation and practice has a formal and thematic substance. Themes that have always preoccupied Buyers include books, labour and the domestic ritual. She is based in Elora, Ontario.
Laura Millard is a Canadian contemporary artist. She uses for her installations drawings and videos records of the marks left on the earth obtained from drones, such as traces of the tracks of skates and snowmobiles on ice in northern Canada in a long-term investigation of ways to reinvent the landscape tradition of Canada. She also is an educator with over many years of experience working at OCAD University and a writer; she lives and works in Toronto.
Carol Podedworny is a museum director and curator who advocated for the inclusion of contemporary Indigenous art and for Indigenous voices in Canadian museums in a career spanning over 40 years. Besides post-contact First Nations art, she is interested in contemporary Canadian art, and a diverse range of art history and art, including its material practice. She is the author or co-author of many books, catalogues and essays which investigate these subjects as well as issues of medical inquiry.