Agnes Etherington Art Centre
The Agnes Etherington Art Centre is a research-intensive public art museum in Kingston, Ontario, Canada located in the heart of the historic campus of Queen's University. It has a distinguished collection and mounts 12 new exhibitions annually, as well as artists' talks and performances, public lectures, symposia, workshops and school and family programs. The gallery has received a number of awards for its exhibitions from the Canada Council for the Arts,[1] the Ontario Association of Art Galleries[2] and others.
History
The Agnes has its roots in the Kingston Art and Music Club, founded in 1926, and owes its existence to Agnes McCausland Richardson Etherington (1880–1954), a driving force behind the club.[3] Agnes Etherington's grandfather had founded the grain dealer James Richardson & Sons in 1857 and the family had become very wealthy. Agnes's brother George Richardson, who died fighting in World War I in 1916, left a legacy for her to use as she felt fit to stimulate development of the arts at Queen's University. She used this to found the George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, which still provides an important source of arts funding to the university.[4]
Agnes Etherington bequeathed her house, an elegant Neo-Georgian mansion, to Queen's University for use as a university and community art gallery. The Agnes Etherington Art Centre opened to the public in 1957. The building was extended in 1962, 1975, 1978 and 2000, and now has an area of 1,720 square metres.[5]
Facilities
In addition to the historical Etherington House and eight beautiful galleries, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre features a studio, Atrium, and a publications lounge. The creation of the David McTavish Art Study Room in 2015-2016 provided an accessible, dedicated space for encounter and study of works of art from the collection for groups.
Events and public programs
The Agnes offer a spectrum of events and programs throughout the year that deepen understanding of visual art of the past and the present, and cultivate creative skills and exchange. Courses, workshops, drop-in studio sessions and school programs draw on exhibitions for discussion and as inspiration for hands-on activities in the André Biéler Studio. Through the fall and winter, lectures,discussions, tours,custom seminars and screenings involve the Queen's University's research and learning context, while engaging the wider public from near and far. Each summer, the gallery offers Summer SmARTs programs with art-intensive summer day camps for children and an art course of teens.
Artist residencies create contexts for in-depth exchange with exhibiting artists, a growing facet of the gallery's activities that situates it as a hub of innovation and inventive forms of production and exchange.
Collections
The Agnes Etherington Art Centre holds over 16,000 works ranging from the 14th century to the present, placing it among the largest galleries in Ontario. The collection, which can be viewed online at www.agnes.queensu.ca, includes paintings, sculptures and graphics by major Canadian artists, European old master paintings, African art, historical dress, quilts, silver and decorative art. [6] At the heart of the European historical collection are a group of nearly 200 paintings donated by philanthropists Alfred Bader and Isabel Bader, including works by Rembrandt van Rijn and El Greco.[7]
Major artists represented in the collection include Shuvinai Ashoona, Rebecca Belmore, André Charles Biéler, Shary Boyle, AA Bronson, Ian Carr-Harris, Emily Carr, Bernard Clark, Sarindar Dhaliwal, Willem Drost, André Fauteux, Vera Frenkel, General Idea, Robert Houle, Luis Jacob, Fernand Leduc, Ozias Leduc, Jan Lievens, David Milne, Kim Ondaatje, Judy Radul, Rembrandt van Rijn, David Rokeby, William Sawyer, Derek Sullivan, Doménikos Theotokópoulos, William Ronald, Horatio Walker, and Norman White.
Selected publications
The Art Centre has issued many publications over the years.[8] A selection follows:
Title | Author(s) | |
---|---|---|
Bernard Clark: Tattoo Portraits | Jan Allen | ISBN 978-1-55339-261-3 |
Vera Frenkel's String Games | Jan Allen & Earl Miller | ISBN 978-1-55339-259-0 |
Annie Pootoogook: Kinngait Compositions | Jan Allen | ISBN 978-1-55339-260-6 |
Lost and Found: Wright of Derby’s View of Gibraltar | John Bonehill, Janet M. Brooke, Barbara Klempan, David de Witt | ISBN 978-1-55339-258-3 |
Don Maynard: Franken Forest | Jan Allen & Linda Jansma | ISBN 978-1-55339-256-9 |
William Brymner: Artist, Teacher, Colleague | Alicia Boutilier & Paul Maréchal | ISBN 9781553392514 |
Sorting Daemons: Art, Surveillance Regimes and Social Control | Jan Allen, Kirsty Robertson & Sarah E.K. Smith | ISBN 978-1-55339-253-8 |
Karin Davie: Underworlds | Jan Allen | ISBN 978-1-55339-095-4 |
The Bader Collection: Dutch and Flemish Paintings | David de Witt | ISBN 978-1-55339-094-7 |
Beyond the Silhouette: Fashion and the Women of Historic Kingston | M. Elaine MacKay | ISBN 978-1-55339-093-0 |
Etherington House: Building a Legacy | Patricia Sullivan | ISBN 978-1-55339-091-6 |
Lyla Rye: Hopscotch | Kenneth Hayes | ISBN 978-1-55339-092-3 |
Telling Stories, Secret Lives | Jan Allen, Steven Matijcio et al. | ISBN 978-1-55339-088-6 |
Neutrinos They Are Very Small | Jan Allen, Corinna Ghaznavi & Allison Morehead | ISBN 978-1-55339-089-3 |
"An Artist After All": Daniel Fowler in Canada | Dorothy M. Farr | ISBN 1-55339-090-3 |
Sarindar Dhaliwal: Record Keeping | Sunil Gupta, Richard Fung, Janice Cheddie et al. | ISBN 1-899127-05-4 |
Erik Edson: Fable | Jan Allen & Catherine Osborne | ISBN 1-55339-086-5 |
Ah, Wilderness! Resort Architecture in the Thousand Islands | Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey & Dorothy Farr | ISBN 0-88911-543-5 |
Machine Life | Jan Allen, Ihor Holubizky & Caroline Seck Langill | ISBN 0-88911-918-X |
Gary Kibbins: Grammar Horses | Jan Allen & Gary Kibbins | ISBN 0-88911-916-3 |
Connected: Contemporary Art in Kingston | Jan Allen (ed) | ISBN 0-88911-912-0 |
Museopathy | Jan Allen, Jim Drobnick & Jennifer Fisher | ISBN 0-88911-908-2 |
Better Worlds: Activist and Utopian Projects by Artists | Jan Allen & Laura Marks | ISBN 0-88911-912-0 |
Who Means What: Brent Roe, Paintings 1992-2001 | John Armstrong | ISBN 0-88911-906-6 |
Laurel Woodcock: Take Me, I'm Yours | Jan Allen & Paul Kelley | ISBN 0-88911-827-2 |
Gretchen Sankey: Some of the Parts | Jan Allen | ISBN 0-88911-754-3 |
Jayce Salloum | Jim Drobnick & Jennifer Fisher | ISBN 0-88911-752-7 |
Crime and Punishment | Jennifer Rudder | ISBN 0-88911-750-0 |
Flaming Creatures: New Tendencies in Canadian Video. | Gary Kibbins | ISBN 0-88911-748-9 |
Tapes that Think: Video Works by Steve Reinke, Tran T. Kim-Trang, Rodney Werden | Gary Kibbins | ISBN 0-88911-702-0 |
Edifice | Jan Allen | ISBN 0-88911-748-9 |
Germaine Koh: Persona | Jan Allen | ISBN 0-88911-744-6 |
Of Mudlarkers and Measurers | S. Dhaliwal | ISBN 0-88911-742-X |
Rise and Fall: John Dickson, Laurie Walker. | Jan Allen et al. | ISBN 0-88911-706-3 |
Sophie Bellissent: In the Flesh | Jan Allen | ISBN 0-88911-740-3 |
RX: Taking Our Medicine | Jan Allen & Kim Sawchuck | ISBN 0-88911-698-9 |
Pictorial Incidents The Photography of William Gordon Shields | Michael Bell | ISBN 0-88911-504-4 |
A. A. Chesterfield Ungava Portraits 1902-04 | William C. James | ISBN 0-88911-373-4 |
Heritage Quilt Collection | Ruth McKendry & Dorothy Farr | ISBN 0-88911-539-7 |
References
- ↑ "The Agnes Etherington Art Centre receives the 2005 York Wilson Endowment Award". Canada Council for the Arts. Retrieved 4 March 2009.
- ↑ "Awards: 2007 Winners". Oaag.org. Retrieved 4 March 2009.
- ↑ "The people behind campus landmarks" Archived May 31, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. Queens Journal. Retrieved 4 March 2009.
- ↑ Smith, Frances K.; et al. (2006), André Biéler : an artist's life and times, Toronto: Firefly Books, ISBN 1-55407-232-8
- ↑ "About the Art Centre". Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Retrieved 4 March 2009.
- ↑ "Agnes Etherington Art Centre". Queen's University. Retrieved 4 March 2009.
- ↑ "Alfred and Isabel Bader donate 68 paintings to Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen's University, Kingston". CODART. 22 April 2014. Retrieved 17 July 2015.
- ↑ "Publications". Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Retrieved 9 July 2012.
External links
- Agnes Etherington Art Centre - official site
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Coordinates: 44°13′31″N 76°29′47″W / 44.22528°N 76.49639°W