Public Receptions & Events - McMaster University

mcmaster
museum of art
Newsletter - Summer 2012

Our Mission
The McMaster Museum of Art serves as
a cultural hub for the University campus
and the region through dynamic and multidisciplinary
exhibitions and programs,
scholarly interpretation and preservation
of collections, and innovative practices in
museology.
Our Vision
Our Vision is to contribute to the
international distinction of McMaster
University by stimulating critical thinking,
creating an environment for engaged
dialogue, and inspiring creativity through
the experience of the arts.
McMaster Museum of Art www.mcmaster.ca/museum
A Letter from the Director and Chief Curator
As our anniversary year continues, the programming at
the McMaster Museum of Art (MMA) moves from “record
keeping” (The Interrogative Spirit) to inquiring. In two
separate but related exhibitions—The Last Things Before
the Last and Painting Beyond—the MMA’s collection is
examined by a guest curator and an artist respectively. Their
approaches ponder the importance of collections: their legacy, their changing
relevance over time, and their significance as cultural heritage. In The Last
Things and Painting Beyond, curators E.C. Woodley and Gary Spearin provide
the visitor with reflections on the Museum’s history and on contemporary
curatorial and artistic practices. As an academically-contextualized institution,
part of the MMA’s role is to present exhibitions that push the boundaries
methodologically and these exhibitions do just that: in the first instance, a
curator references past MMA exhibitions; and in the second, an artist reflects
on his own practice in relation to works in the collection.
Also of note this season, we present an exhibition of recent acquisitions to the
Museum’s numismatic collection—twenty-two coins, dating back to Alexander
the Great from McMaster astronomy professor Ethan Vishniac and his wife,
McMaster Provost, Dr. Ilene Busch-Vishniac. Ethan Vishniac inherited the
collection from his grandfather, renowned photographer Roman Vishniac. As
the Provost leaves McMaster to become the President of the University of
Saskatchewan, she will be missed as the Senior Administrator at McMaster
University responsible for the Museum. We are thrilled that the family will
be leaving behind significant material culture for the Museum to steward.
Many thanks to the Provost and the Professor for their donation and also to Dr.
Spencer Pope, for the production of an exhibition to mark this important gift.
As the year hits mid-stride, we hope you find time to visit often and to engage
in a dialogue with the museum, its collections, and the remarkable people who
contribute to our on-going consideration of art in the social milieu.
Carol Podedworny

Gary Spearin: iNifiNiTi
May 12 – August 18, 2012
Panabaker Gallery
Public Reception: Friday June 1, 6-8 pm
Since 2007 Gary Spearin has been
producing a series of paintings that
are displayed as an installation titled
iNifiNiTi, which he has conceived as
an optical device to explore and to
visualize the resonant dynamics of time
and our experience and perception of it.
While the presentation in any given
gallery installation is variable,
determined by factors such as available
wall space, they are always installed
in a uniform grid, and in an order
decided by the artist only during the
Gary Spearin installation
hanging. The grid serves as a formal
grounding structure contrasting with
the spontaneous order of placement.
Within it there are infinite possibilities
for reading the works individually or the
installation as a whole.
The individual titles are derived from
dates (month/day/year) of sometimes
personal significance but mostly
of random selection, and always
unrelated to the date of their making.
The surfaces of the paintings are so
visually rich and intricately detailed
that any one of them invites endless,
obsessive viewing, as does the whole
of the installation. Each work possesses
a unique character, yet the identity of
individual works can easily be obscured
by the overwhelming nature of the
group. The whole is the sum of its parts
and each of the parts is a self-contained
whole. Spearin is painting pictures of
ephemeral, infinite dimensions that exist
beyond those which we can perceive or
know.
Excerpt from the exhibition
catalogue essay “Picturing Infinity”;
David Liss, Artistic Director and
Curator, Museum of Contemporary
Canadian Art, Toronto.
Gary Spearin was born in Hamilton; he
studied at the Nova Scotia College of
Art and the University of Guelph. This
is Spearin’s first Hamilton public gallery
exhibition since 1995. He currently lives
at Lake Huron between Kettle Point and
Blue Point and teaches at Fanshawe
College in London.
Images from top: Gary Spearin 06-01-1974
(2010); and 11-24-2039 (2011), both oil on
canvas, 61 x 51 cm, courtesy of the artist
iNifiNiTi was presented at Museum London,
24 September 2011—18 March 2012. The
accompanying catalogue is a partnership between
Museum London and the McMaster Museum of
Art. Introduction by Cassandra Getty, essay by David
Liss, and insert poster-essay by Gary Spearin and Ihor
Holubizky. 32 pp, ISBN 978-1-897215-36-4

PAINTING BEYOND a body of views
an orchestration by Gary Spearin
Sherman Gallery, May 12 – August 18, 2012
Public Reception: Friday June 1, 6-8 pm
The McMaster Museum of Art has invited
Gary Spearin to develop an exhibition
from the collection as a complement to
iNifiNiTi, and a continuing dialogue. In
selecting 20 th century and contemporary
works and interweaving two of his
own—the Toronto Riots suite, 2011, and
White Flag, 2012—Spearin considers
aspects that are beyond the “aboutness”
or the likeness and comparison to his
own work. Two of the selections are
not painting, but monochromatic boxes.
Marcel Duchamp’s 1966-67 Series F La
boîte en valise is shown closed, while
Alfredo Jaar’s 1995 suite of 99 archival
boxes with photographs of the Rwandan
genocide, titled Benjamin, were never
intended to be open. Hence, the title
PAINTING BEYOND, but beyond that is
a “body of views”—paintings by Art
& Language (the exhibition subtitle
is imbedded in their work), Richard
Hamilton, Leon Kossoff and Gerhard
Richter, orchestrated to pose questions
about what we see and know.
In his 2001 essay “Painting and the Death
of the Spectator” the British art historian
Charles Harrison wrote; “One reason—
among many—why we cannot know is
that we cannot necessarily tell whether
there is anyone looking; whether there is
some possibly competent spectator of the
work in question for whom confirmation
of her own enduring presence is not the
end of seeing.”
The Vishniac Coin Collection
The McMaster Museum of Art has
received a gift of twenty-two coins,
dating back to Alexander the Great
—significant for both their value to
McMaster’s teaching collection and their
provenance. The Vishniac Coin Collection
has been gifted to McMaster University
by McMaster astronomy professor Ethan
Vishniac, who inherited the collection
from his grandfather, renowned
photographer Roman Vishniac.
McMaster Classics Professor Spencer
Pope, who is also the Honorary Curator of
McMaster’s coin collection, has mounted
an exhibition of the Vishniac Collection
this summer.
While most of the Vishniac coins date
from the Roman Republic, the breadth
of the collection from the 4 th century BC
to an 1857 Bank of Upper Canada penny
allows a keen look into the traditions
developed in classical antiquity that
continue today. As Pope observes,
”Coinage is a fundamentally conservative
Image above:
Roman Orichalcum Coin of Emperor Galba
(AD 68-69)
OBVERSE: Laureate head of Galba,
facing right, “IMP SER GALBA CAES
AUG TR P”.
REVERSE: Libertas (deity representing
Liberty) standing left, holding pileus and rod,
“LIBERTAS PUBLICA SC”.
medium which seldom deviates from
longstanding traditions and established
iconography that imbues them with the
authority of the past and makes them
instantly recognizable as objects that
will not lose their value.”
This collection was amassed by Russianborn
photographer and biologist Roman
Vishniac (1897-1990). Roman Vishniac: A
Vanished World, the powerful exhibition
of his photographs chronicling life in the
Jewish villages and ghettos of Central
and Eastern Europe between 1935 and
1939, was shown at McMaster in 2008.

The Last Things Before the Last
Guest Curated by E. C. Woodley
Levy Gallery, May 24 – August 4, 2012
Public Reception: Friday June 1, 6-8 pm
Curator’s Talk: Wednesday June 6, 12:30 pm
For Siegfried Kracauer (History: The Last
Things Before the Last, 1969), the phrase
“the last things before the last” had a
dual meaning. It could describe history as
an elusive object of study or refer to the
medium of film as a repository of captured
time and image, a “before” adjacent to,
alienated from—and inserted into—the
City of Landau identity card,
1924. Herman H. Levy Fonds,
McMaster Museum of Art
“now” of real time. I think of the museum
as repository for the last things before the
last, housing elusive objects of captured
time to be studied, cared for, repositioned
or reanimated after decades, centuries
or millennia of being out in the world of
commerce and ritual.
Contemporary museum spaces are also
sites with their own specific histories.
The museum inventory includes not
only individual artworks, objects and
artifacts, but also the ghosts of prior
exhibitions. Fragments of two exhibitions
are resurrected; artist Alexander Pilis’s
curatorial endeavour The Blind Architect
Meets Rembrandt (2010), and from the
1994 installation that opened the new
building, featuring the donated collection
of Herman Levy which once hung in the
family home. These fragments live in
the presence of a new composition of
other works from the collection, which
has emerged with its own associational
counterpoints, and within the historically
and existentially resonant polyphony of
disappearances and reappearances.
The new configuration draws on the
breadth of the time span of the Museum
collections—from antiquity, across First
World War-era pages of the Levy family
photo album to Toronto artist Max Dean’s
self portrait Chair Without Front Legs
from the 2011 series Objects Waiting.
This seemingly “ahistorical” exhibition
invites an excess of history, and all of the
images are portraits or representations
of the human figure. Some are drawings
on paper, others photography, painting
and sculpture. These materials were
entrusted to carry their images into the
future. In the installation configuration,
the more or less faint traces—some
nearly vanished on account of time
and exposure—come to represent the
mortality of the people depicted, whether
that of the artists, their subjects, or by
proxy, that of the collector.
- E.C. Woodley
Karl Stauffer-Bern Portrait of Gottfried Keller, 1887, etching, printed by Otto Felsing, Berlin.
Purchase, 1966: photo: John Tamblyn. Max Dean Chair Without Front Legs, 2011, chromogenic
print, ed. 1/4, Donald Murray Shepherd Trust Purchase, 2012

Alexander Young Jackson (Canadian 1882-1974) Girl in the Middy, n.d. (1913)
© Courtesy of the Estate of the late Dr. Naomi Jackson Groves
Photo: John Tamblyn
A.Y. Jackson
Promised Gift
Girl in the Middy, a unique and rare figurative painting by A.Y. Jackson, a founding
member of the Group of Seven, is a promised gift to the McMaster Museum of Art
offered by Winifred Hewetson in memory of her husband, J. Russell Hewetson.
Both were McMaster graduates in 1951. It is a portrait of Mr. Hewetson’s mother,
Rosa Breithaupt (Hewetson Clark). The double sided painting (with a landscape
on the back) has been in their family collection for almost 80 years and this is its
first public exhibition.
Mr. Hewetson corresponded with the artist’s niece, Dr. Naomi
Jackson Groves, who taught art at McMaster University in
the 1950s, and he showed her the painting in 1992.
Girl in the Middy, is on view at McMaster now until August 4
as part of the exhibition 125 & 45: an interrogative spirit.
Professor Judy Major-
Girardin and Annie Fraser
Student Awards 2012
Carol Podedworny, MMA
Director, and Gord Bond
Professor Judy Major-
Girardin and Emily Andrus
At the April reception for the graduating art student exhibition, several students received
special awards—three studio art students for their art work and accomplishments within
the program; and two McMaster students for their writing, inspired by exhibitions or
works of art on view at the MMA during the last academic year.
Graduating Art Students Awards
McMaster School of the Arts Faculty Award: Annie Fraser
Museum Award: Gord Bond
People’s Choice Award: Emily Andrus
Carol Podedworny, MMA Director, with writing award
winners Brianna Smrke and Robert Revington
Inspired by Art: Student Writing Awards
Writing Award (poetry): Robert Revington, Humanities
A Crewman’s Reflections on the View from the Ice in Cook’s Second Voyage
(based on art work in the ‘First Contact?’ exhibition)
Writing Award (essay): Brianna Smrke, Arts and Science
Élan Vital: A Strange Attractor (based on Ramona Ramlochand’s installation)

Selected Recent Acquisitions
Gift of the Artist
Barbara Astman
(Canadian b. United States 1950)
Scenes from a movie for one, 1997
# 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, unique edition,
digital output on paper, each 91.5 x 77.5 cm
Dancing with Che, 2002
# 1, 2, 4, 5, 15, 20
ed. of 2 digital prints, each 76 x 76 cm
Natalka Husar
(Canadian b. United States 1951)
Commissar’s Daughter, 2007
oil on rag board, 81 x 102 cm
Susan Schelle (Canadian b. 1947)
Seascape, 1993
two black and white photo-murals
on RC paper, each 103 x 162 cm
Michael Thompson
(Canadian b. 1954)
Light on a Wall, 2008
pencil on paper, 76.2 x 57.2 cm
Giovanni Battista Piranesi Villa Adriana in Tivoli, photo: John Tamblyn
Gift of Barbara Astman
Arnaud Maggs
(Canadian b. 1926)
Barbara Astman, 1979, From 64 Portrait Studies
1976-78, 38 x 38 cm
Portrait of Barbara Astman, 1979
Unique color Polaroid, 35.5 x 28 cm
Gift of Rabbi Bernard Baskin
Leonard Baskin
(American 1922-2000)
85 prints, 11 posters, 22 Gehenna Press books,
advertisements, posters, archival material
Lizard skeleton, 1945, woodcut, 3 x 14.5 cm
Dying Stag, 1957, woodcut, 7.5 x 8.5 cm
Eakins, 1966, wood engraving, 5.7 x 4.5 cm
Charles Meryon, 1969, wood engraving
11.6 x 6.2 cm
Theodule Ribot, 1969, wood engraving
7.1 x 12.3 cm
Pictor Ignotus, 1969, wood engraving
10.1 x 10 cm
Birds and Animals, Folio of 64 original
woodcuts, 1974, 29.2 x 37.9 cm
De Hooghe’s Sibyl, 1978, etching, 15 x 15.2 cm
Lessons in Far Future, 1978, etching,
14.9 x 14.9 cm
Tern, 1981, woodcut, 20.5 x 8.5 cm
Mexico, 1995, coloured etching, 19.2 x 18.5 cm
Gift of Gerard Jennings
Anne and Patrick Poirier
(both French, b. 1941 and 1942)
La Lutte de Jupiter et des Géants
1983, Belgian black marble, bronze
33.5 x 102 x 56 cm overall
Margaret Priest
(b. England 1944, lives in Canada)
A Renovated Museum No. 4 - Another
Stage, 1979, pencil on handmade
paper, 58.5 x 79 cm
Gift of Dr. and Mrs.
Alexander Gordon McKay
Albrecht Dürer (German 1471-1528)
The High Priest Rejects Joachim’s
Offering, 1504, From the Life of the
Virgin 1/17, woodcut, 29.5 x 21.2 cm
Marino Marini (Italian 1901-1980)
Composition, 1955
Ed. 117/200
lithograph, 63.5 x 43 cm
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
(Italian 1720-1778)
4 etchings
Avanzi del Tempio detto di Appollo nella Villa
Adriana vioino a Tivoli, n.d.
46.5 x 61 cm
The Via Appia, the second frontispiece
to Volume III of Antichita Romane
c. 1756, 38.7 x 61 cm
Veduta interna della Villa di Mecenate
(Villa of Maecenas at Tivoli), n.d.
47.6 x 63 cm
Avanzi di una Sala appartenente al
Castro Pretorio nela Villa Adriana
in Tivoli A Tribunale ornato di nicchie
(Apse of the so-called Hall of the
Philosophers), 44.3 x 56.2 cm
Gift of Milton Winberg
Carl Beam (Ojibwe 1943-2005)
photo emulsion and acrylic on canvas
Alex Janvier, 2000, 91.4 x 61 cm
Joseph Beuys, 2000, 91.4 x 61 cm
Rauschenberg, 2000, 91.4 x 61 cm
Purple Bull, 2000-2001, 122 x 91.5 cm
Untitled (Short Bull), 2002, 122 x 91.5 cm
Self Portrait, 2002, 91.4 x 61 cm
Untitled (Duchamp / King over Pawn), 2002
91.2 x 66.2 cm
Untitled (Beckett), 2002, 91.4 x 61 cm
Darwin, c. 2002, 122 x 91.5 cm
Whale, 2002, 91.4 x 61 cm
Donald Murray Shepherd Trust
Purchase
Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova
(Russian 1881-1962)
Rauhreif (Le givre), 1912
Two preparatory drawings for Tikhon
Churilin’s poem Inei (Hoar Frost), black chalk
on cream laid paper, 29 x 23 cm each
Purchased with funds from Donald
Murray Shepherd Trust and
the Canada Council for the Arts
Acquisition Assistance Program
Natalka Husar
(Canadian b. United States 1951)
Looking at Art, 2009 (shown below)
oil on rag board, 81 x 102 cm
Deviled Eggs, 2006
oil on rag board, 81 x 102 cm
Natalka Husar, Looking at Art

Recent Publications
Greg Staats: Condolence
The exhibition brings together several works
by Greg Staats (Toronto-based, b. Ohsweken,
Ontario) that reference language loss, acquisition
and resurgence through photographic series, video
works, and personal archival materials. Essays
by Richard W. Hill Sr., Charlotte Jones, Carol
Podedworny. 46 pp, ISBN: 978-0-929025-68-1
125 & 45: an interrogative spirit
Levy Series: Part IV
Celebrating McMaster University’s 125 th and the
Museum’s 45 th anniversaries in 2012, this exhibition
tracks the history and landmark moments of both
through art works from the collection. This is the fourth
addition to the Levy Folio of exhibition-based essays
presenting varied curatorial perspectives on the Herman
H. Levy Collection and Levy Bequest Collection at the
McMaster Museum of Art. Essay by Ihor Holubizky.
8 pp, ISBN 978-1-926632-06-3
Rising to the Occasion: The Long 18 th Century
The legacies of the 18 th century—enlightenment,
empiricism, revolution and innovation are explored
through an exhibition including major works by both 18 th
century artists Houdon, Gainsborough, Romney, Verelst
and Taillasson; and senior contemporary Canadian
artists Rebecca Belmore, Angela Grauerholz, Tony
Scherman, John Massey, and Jiri Ladocha. Introduction
by Carol Podedworny and essays by Mark A. Cheetham,
Ihor Holubizky, and Angela Sheng. 44 pp, colour images
ISBN 978-1-926632-05-6
Gary Spearin: iNifiNiTi More on this on the iNifiNiTi exhibition pages of this publication
A full list of McMaster Museum of Art Publications is available online via the Exhibitions link
on the Museum’s website: www.mcmaster.ca/museum
McMaster Museum of Art
Advisory Board
Ex Officio
Patrick Deane
Ilene Busch-Vishniac
Roger Couldrey
Suzanne Crosta
Keith Kinder
Museum
Carol Podedworny
Academic
Angela Sheng, Chair
Janice Hladki
Benson Honig
Liss Platt
Spencer Pope
Neil McLaughlin
Doug Welch
Staff
Julie Bronson, Collections Administrator
Teresa Gregorio, Monitor/Information Officer
Feng Guo, Operations Assistant
Ihor Holubizky, Senior Curator
Nicole Knibb, Education Co-ordinator
Jude Levett, Administrative Assistant
Jennifer Petteplace, Preparator and Installation Officer
Carol Podedworny, Director and Chief Curator
Rose Anne Prevec, Communications Officer
Hamish Shea-Pelletier, Monitor and Installation Assistant
Dominika Jakubiec, Work/Study Student
Honorary Curator, The Bruce R. Brace Coin Collection
Dr. Spencer Pope
Docents and Volunteers
Melodie Adler
Javier Caicedo
Jim Casey
Danny Chan
Tania Charles
Deborah and Glen Eker
Kate Hand
Daniela Infante
Maureen Hayman
Yoko Ichikawa
Natalie Jachyra
Nashwa Khan
Jessica Martin
Payge Martin
Olivia Murray
Gabriela Palomo
Kayla Pegg
Daniela Ponce
Community
David Adames
William Bensen
Wynn Bensen
Patrick Bermingham
Robert Bowers
Leah Thiffault
Rachel Tirone
Nikkie To
Yvonne Tristani
Jane Turner-Cooke
Ianitza Vassileva
Janice Waldrum
Shariq Wani
Angela Wu
All images copyright © 2012 McMaster Museum of Art, McMaster University unless otherwise indicated.

McMaster Museum of Art
Alvin A. Lee Building,
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, ON L8S 4L6
Tel. (905) 525-9140 ext. 23081
Fax (905) 527-4548
museum@mcmaster.ca
www.mcmaster.ca/museum
The Museum acknowledges the support
of the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Hamilton,
its members, McMaster University and the various
trusts and endowments established in its name.
The 2011/2012 program year is brought to you
in part through the generosity of the Judith
Harris and Tony Woolfson Trust for Curatorial
Research and Practice.
Gallery Hours
Tue/Wed/Fri 11 am - 5 pm
Thursday 11 am - 7 pm
Saturday 12 - 5 pm
Closed Sundays, Mondays,
statutory holidays, and
December 24, 2012 - January 1, 2013
Office Hours
Monday - Friday 8:30 am - 4:30 pm
Admission
Pay what you can, if you can with a suggested
donation of $2.00. Students, seniors, and
members are always free.
Wheelchair Access
The Museum building and all gallery levels are
wheelchair accessible.
Public Receptions & Events
May 12, 2012 at 1 pm
May @ Mac at McMaster University
Tour of 125 & 45 exhibition
June 1, 2012, 6 – 8 pm
Public Reception for Summer exhibitions
June 6, 2012 at 12:30
Curator’s Talk by E.C. Woodley
The Last Things Before the Last exhibition
June 7, 2012, 6-7:30 pm
Tour of 125 & 45 exhibition
McMaster Alumni Lecture Series
Free. Register at alumni@mcmaster.ca
cover image: Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932) Isa, 1990 oil on canvas, Levy Bequest Purchase, 1997. Photo: John Tamblyn © Gerhard Richter.
Included in the exhibition, The Last Things Before the Last