The McMaster Museum of Art (MMA) is a non-profit public art gallery at

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood and Westdale, adjacent to the Royal Botanical Ga ...

Hamilton Hamilton may refer to: People * Hamilton (name), a common British surname and occasional given name, usually of Scottish origin, including a list of persons with the surname ** The Duke of Hamilton, the premier peer of Scotland ** Lord Hamilto ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

. The museum is located in the centre of the campus, attached to Mills Memorial Library and close to the McMaster University Student Centre.

History

McMaster University was founded in 1887, in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

, and the art collection began soon after as portraits of presidents and faculty accumulated. 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. 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. 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.

Programming

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. 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. The MMA belongs to the Ontario Association of Art Galleries reciprocal program, through which members of participating galleries receive free admission to all galleries.

Collection

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. 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. 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 Christian Rohlfs (November 22, 1849 – January 8, 1938) was a German painter and printmaker, one of the important representatives of German expressionism. Early life and education He was born in Groß Niendorf, Kreis Segeberg in Prussia ...

, and Natalia Goncharova. The permanent collection, one of the finest University collections in the country, consists of over 7,000 objects. It includes: *

Impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passag ...

and

Post-Impressionist Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ag ...

Art: The Herman H. Levy collection includes significant paintings by artists

Gustave Courbet Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and ...

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...

Camille Pissarro Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies). ...

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...

, and Gustave Caillebotte. * Early 20th-century German Prints, including Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix,

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (6 May 1880 – 15 June 1938) was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th-century ...

, and

Käthe Kollwitz Käthe Kollwitz ( born as Schmidt; 8 July 1867 – 22 April 1945) was a German artist who worked with painting, printmaking (including etching, lithography and woodcuts) and sculpture. Her most famous art cycles, including ''The Weavers'' a ...

. * European

Old Master In art history, "Old Master" (or "old master")Old Masters De ...

paintings and prints from the 16th century including

Sir Thomas Lawrence Sir Thomas Lawrence (13 April 1769 – 7 January 1830) was an English portrait painter and the fourth president of the Royal Academy. A child prodigy, he was born in Bristol and began drawing in Devizes, where his father was an innkeeper at t ...

Willem Claeszoon Heda Willem Claesz. Heda (December 14, 1593/1594c. 1680/1682) was a Dutch Golden Age artist from the city of Haarlem devoted exclusively to the painting of still life. He is known for his innovation of the late breakfast genre of still life painting. ...

Gerrit Dou Gerrit Dou (7 April 1613 – 9 February 1675), also known as Gerard Douw or Dow, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, whose small, highly polished paintings are typical of the Leiden fijnschilders. He specialised in genre scenes and is noted for his ...

and Michiel Sweerts. * 20th-century European modernist and contemporary art from

Ben Nicholson Benjamin Lauder Nicholson, OM (10 April 1894 – 6 February 1982) was an English painter of abstract compositions (sometimes in low relief), landscape and still-life. Background and training Nicholson was born on 10 April 1894 in De ...

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

and

Alexander Rodchenko Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko (russian: link=no, Алекса́ндр Миха́йлович Ро́дченко; – 3 December 1956) was a Russian and Soviet artist, sculptor, photographer, and graphic designer. He was one of the founders ...

Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( , ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthroposophy. He was a founder of a provocative art mov ...

Anselm Kiefer Anselm Kiefer (born 8 March 1945) is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Peter Dreher and Horst Antes at the end of the 1960s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac. The poems of Paul Celan h ...

Anish Kapoor Sir Anish Mikhail Kapoor (born 12 March 1954) is a British-Indian sculptor specializing in installation art and conceptual art. Born in Mumbai, Kapoor attended the elite all-boys Indian boarding school The Doon School, before moving to the UK t ...

Antony Gormley Sir Antony Mark David Gormley (born 30 August 1950) is a British sculptor. His works include the ''Angel of the North'', a public sculpture in Gateshead in the north of England, commissioned in 1994 and erected in February 1998; '' Another ...

and

Gerhard Richter Gerhard Richter (; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, and also photographs and glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary German ...

. * Canadian art - a survey collection of historical works by

Tom Thomson Thomas John Thomson (August 5, 1877July 8, 1917) was a Canadian artist active in the early 20th century. During his short career, he produced roughly 400 oil sketches on small wood panels and approximately 50 larger works on canvas. His ...

, A.Y. Jackson and other members of the

Group of Seven The Group of Seven (G7) is an intergovernmental political forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States; additionally, the European Union (EU) is a "non-enumerated member". It is officiall ...

. Contemporary works by established mid career and senior artists including

Barbara Astman Barbara Astman RCA is a Canadian artist who specializes in a hybrid of photography and new media, often using her own body as object and subject, merging art and technology. Early life Astman was born in Rochester, New York, the second of three ...

Betty Goodwin Betty Roodish Goodwin, (March 19, 1923 – December 1, 2008) was a multidisciplinary Canadian artist who expressed the complexity of human experience through her work. Early life Goodwin was born in Montreal, the only child of Romanian imm ...

, Shelagh Keeley,

Arnaud Maggs Arnaud Maggs (May 5, 1926 – November 17, 2012) 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 c ...

, and Tony Scherman. * Inuit art with emphasis on

Cape Dorset Kinngait (Inuktitut meaning "high mountain" or "where the hills are"; Syllabics: ᑭᙵᐃᑦ), formerly known as Cape Dorset until 27 February 2020, is an Inuit hamlet located on Dorset Island near Foxe Peninsula at the southern tip of Baff ...

prints and sculpture *

Antiquities Antiquities are objects from antiquity, especially the civilizations of the Mediterranean: the Classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, Ancient Egypt and the other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Artifacts from earlier periods such as the Meso ...

The Museum’s Paper Centre contains over 4,000 prints, drawings, and watercolours that the public can view by appointment.London Arts http://www.londonarts.ca/Default.aspx?Select=ArtsOrganizationsDetail&Business=SfeLNzVMN2EfvKDN6%2F3bVw%3D%3D The MMA is also home to the Bruce Brace Coin Collection, which consists of coins and medallions from Rome and Greece. 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.

Selected works

File:Mary Beale - Head of a Young Man.jpg,

Mary Beale Mary Beale (; 26 March 1633 8 October 1699) was an English portrait painter. She was part of a small band of female professional artists working in London. Beale became the main financial provider for her family through her professional work � ...

, ''Portrait of Charles Beale'', c. 1660 File:Joseph Mallord William Turner - Boston in Lincolnshire.jpg,

J. M. W. Turner Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 177519 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbul ...

, ''Boston in Lincolnshire'', c. 1833 File:Camille Pissarro - Pommiers en fleurs.jpg,

, ''Pommiers en fleurs'', 1870 File:Gustave Courbet - Environs d'Ornans.jpg,

, ''Environs d'Ornans'', 1874 File:Gustave Caillebotte - Voiliers au Mouillage sur la Seine, à Argenteuil.jpg,

Gustave Caillebotte Gustave Caillebotte (; 19 August 1848 – 21 February 1894) was a French painter who was a member and patron of the Impressionists, although he painted in a more realistic manner than many others in the group. Caillebotte was known for his early ...

, ''Voiliers au Mouillage sur la Seine, à Argenteuil'', 1883 File:Van Gogh - Stillleben mit Ingwertopf und Zwiebeln.jpeg,

, ''Still Life with Ginger Jar and Onions'', 1885 File:Claude Monet - Waterloo Bridge, Effet de Soleil.jpg,

, ''Pont de Waterloo, effet de soleil'', 1903 File:Tom Thomson - Algonquin Park.jpg,

, ''Algonquin Park'', 1916

Collaborative projects

McMaster Museum of Art works with faculties across the McMaster University campus. Notable projects/exhibitions using University research and experts include: * Light Echo : Department of Physics and Astronomy * Rising to the Occasion : English & Cultural Studies (John Douglas Taylor Conference) * Togo Salmon Centenary Exhibition : Classics Department * Synasthesia Exhibition : Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences * Fierce : Theatre and Film Studies * Scrapes : Faculty of Humanities * Allyson Mitchell: Ladies Sasquatch : Women’s Studies * First Contact? Exhibition Talk : Indigenous Studies *Faculty Exhibition / Annual Graduating Student Exhibitions : McMaster School of the Arts * A Glimpse of China in the 18th Century : Art History and The Confucious Institute * The Art of Seeing – Visual Literacy Course with Department of Family Medicine : Faculty of Health Sciences * Chewa Masks of Pain and Loss: AIDS in Malawi : Department of AnthropologyMcMaster Daily News http://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/story.cfm?id=3284

References

External links

Official website
{{authority control Art museums and galleries in Ontario Museums in Hamilton, Ontario McMaster University University museums in Canada