McMaster Museum of Art
The McMaster Museum of Art is an art museum in Hamilton, Canada . It houses the McMaster University art collections with more than 6,000 objects. The focus is on paintings from French Impressionism and Late Impressionism , graphic works from German Expressionism , and works of art by Canadian artists. The museum also collects works by contemporary artists and has a coin collection.
history
McMaster University has been collecting artwork since it was founded in Toronto in 1887 . At the beginning, the inventory mainly consisted of paintings with mostly biblical subjects as well as portraits of dignitaries of the university. These pictures were mainly used to decorate the walls of offices and ballrooms. After moving from Toronto to Hamilton, the University received a collection of European prints from the Carnegie Institute in the 1930s . This inventory was continuously expanded in the 1960s and 1970s and expanded to include Canadian art in order to be able to teach students in front of original works.
The University's Department of Art and Art History provided the collection with its own space for exhibition purposes for the first time in 1967. After Herman Duke Levy (1902–1990) from Hamilton donated his collection of 185 works by European and American artists to the university in the mid-1980s, the name McMaster University Art Gallery established itself in 1985 for the university's art collection . After his death, the university also received the Levy Bequest, a foundation capital that has since made it possible to purchase additional works of art. For the collection, which has now grown considerably, a separate building for the art collection was built as an extension to the Mills Memorial Library , which is named Alvin A. Lee Building in honor of the former University President Alvin A. Lee . The university's art collection has been accessible to visitors here since June 11, 1994, now as the McMaster Museum of Art.
collection
The foundations of Herman H. Levy have made a significant contribution to transforming the previously manageable art collection of McMaster University into a public museum. From 1983 to 1985 he donated numerous important paintings from the 19th and early 20th centuries to the university, as well as some older works. These include works by Dutch artists of the Golden Age as the paintings Still Life with Oysters from Willem Claesz. Heda , The Drinker by Adriaen Brouwer and Head of a Young Man by Michiel Sweerts . The Levy Foundation is best known for works of art of Impressionism and Late Impressionism. As a forerunner of this art movement, the painting Environs d'Ornans by Gustave Courbet can be found in the collection, which, like Vincent van Gogh's Still Life with Ginger Pot and Onions, is more realism . The outstanding works of Impressionism include Waterloo Bridge, Effet de Soleil by Claude Monet , Voiliers au Mouillage sur la Seine, à Argenteuil by Gustave Caillebotte or Pommiers en fleurs by Camille Pissarro , which also come from Levy's private collection, as well as the paintings River Scene by Georges Lemmen and Le Bouquet Devant la Fenêtre by Henri Le Sidaner as examples of late impressionism. The portrait of the painter Richard X by Chaim Soutine is exemplary for the following generation of artists . After Levy's death, the purchase budget he created ( Levy Bequest ) made it possible to acquire further important paintings. These include Robert, 9th Baron Petre demonstrating the use of an écorché figure to his son, Robert Edward by George Romney , the portrait of the Reverend William Esdaile by Thomas Lawrence and Boston in Lincolnshire by William Turner .
Adriaen Brouwer (workshop):
The drinker
William Turner:
Boston in Lincolnshire
Utagawa Hiroshige:
rain shower over the great bridge in Atake
Vincent van Gogh:
Still Life with a Ginger Pot and Onions
Claude Monet:
Waterloo Bridge, Effet de Soleil
Tom Thomson:
Algonquin Park
Another area of the collection are works on paper such as prints, drawings, watercolors and photographs. In addition to individual prints from Albrecht Dürer to Utagawa Hiroshige , the focus here is primarily on the Denner Wallace Foundation with prints from German Expressionism . Works by artists from the groups Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Max Pechstein and Erich Heckel are represented , as well as other painters from Germany such as Max Klinger , Lovis Corinth , Otto Dix , George Grosz , Bernhard Kretzschmar and Max Beckmann . These graphic collections are supplemented by individual paintings such as the portrait of Anna Grünebaum by Otto Dix, a terracotta grave relief by Käthe Kollwitz or the sculpture Stürmender Mann by Wilhelm Lehmbruck .
The museum also collects works by Canadian artists. These include paintings such as Algonquin Park by Tom Thomson or Call to Dinner by George Agnew Reid , but also Inuit art with sculptures and prints from Cape Dorset . Furthermore, the museum has set up a department with works by contemporary artists, including the painting Stadtlandschaft by Karl Horst Hödicke from 1988 as well as Heady by Gilbert & George from 1991. There are also works of art by Antony Gormley , Ben Nicholson , Alexander Michailowitsch Rodtschenko , Joseph Beuys and Anselm Kiefer . The modern department is complemented by sculptures by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska , Andreas Gehr , Davis Mach and Katsura Funakoshi .
A special feature in the museum is the coin cabinet . The collection goes back to Edward Togo Salmon, who donated 36 ancient Roman coins to the university in 1946. The museum has only been showing this collection to the public since 1981, and in the following years this area of the collection was expanded to include the current holdings through further donations - also from other areas.
literature
- Jennifer C Watson: The Levy legacy . McMaster University Press, Hamilton 1996, ISBN 0-920603-11-4 .
Web links
Coordinates: 43 ° 15 ′ 45 ″ N , 79 ° 55 ′ 5 ″ W.