KLEINBURG.- The McMichael Canadian Art Collection is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. On November 18, 1965, the McMichaels donated their collection of 194 paintings—as well as their home and land—to the Province of Ontario. Officially opened as the “McMichael Conservation Collection of Art” on July 8, 1966, the gallery’s permanent collection has now grown to over 6,000 distinctively Canadian works of art.
To commemorate the official date of the gift agreement, the McMichael presents the exhibition A Foundation for Fifty Years: McMichael Masterworks, on view starting November 18, 2015. This exhibition showcases some of the most significant donations made to the gallery during their founding year (1966) by Signe and Robert McMichael, as well as by their peers, who wanted to gift the public with beautiful Canadian masterworks. Installed in the main gallery, this collection celebrates the works of the Group of Seven and their contemporaries. Artists include Tom Thomson, Lawren Harris, David Milne, and Emily Carr, to name a few. The exhibition space has been restored to its 1960s modernist style with traditional materials and modern lines, in the manner that the McMichaels intended.
“The McMichael owes its existence and collection to the generosity of donors,” said Sarah Stanners, Director of Curatorial & Collections at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. “This display of masterworks will pay homage to founding donors who helped make the collection what it is today, and demonstrate the significant impact that the spirit of giving can have on a public gallery.”
On November 18th, 1965, Signe and Robert McMichael gave their ten acres of land and home, which they named Tapawingo, along with an impressive collection of 194 works of Canadian art, to the Province of Ontario. In July 1966, our doors opened as a public gallery called the McMichael Conservation Collection of Art. The spirit of this gallery is rooted in its unique celebration of place: a place to retreat from the city, a place to feel Canadian, a place to enjoy the connection between art and nature, a place to celebrate Canadian art and, essentially, a place of joy, as the McMichaels believed was the meaning of the word Tapawingo.
In founding this public gallery, the McMichaels were joined by both artists and fellow Canadian art collectors in making gifts of artwork that could be enjoyed by all. The selected paintings on view in this primary room were gifted during the gallery’s founding year, and thus created A Foundation for Fifty Years. This community spirit of giving continues to build the McMichael Collection of Canadian Art today and into the future. Thank you to all of our volunteers, members, patrons, donors and supporters.
After our early meetings with [artist] Yvonne Housser [and collectors] Norah de Pencier and Arnold Mason, we were consciously envisioning a publicly owned gallery and actively planning and collecting for it, convinced that Tapawingo would one day blossom into a distinctively Canadian sanctuary that could be enjoyed by all. Our enthusiasm had been infectious and persuaded many of those who shared our vision to give us their paintings. It was an extraordinary demonstration of trust that turned our plans from a personal desire for the fulfillment of our ideas to a deeply felt moral obligation to achieve political and public acceptance of Tapawingo and its growing collection. -- Robert McMichael (1986)
