Memorial Art Gallery

Coordinates: 43°09′26″N 77°35′17″W / 43.157222°N 77.588056°W / 43.157222; -77.588056

Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester
South facade of the main gallery
Established	1913
Location	500 University Ave Rochester, NY 14607
Type	Art museum
Collection size	11,000 works of art
Visitor figures	229,985 (2010 - 2011)
Director	Grant Holcomb
Public transit access	Stop #3 (University Avenue/Prince Street) RTS route 18/19 - 18X/19X University
Website	http://mag.rochester.edu/

The Memorial Art Gallery is the civic art museum of Rochester, New York. Founded in 1913, it is part of the University of Rochester and occupies the southern half of the University's former Prince Street campus. It is the focal point of fine arts activity in the region and hosts the biennial Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition and the annual Clothesline Festival.

History

The Gallery is a memorial to James George Averell, a grandson of Hiram Sibley.^[1] After Averell died at age 26, his mother, Emily S. Watson (by then the wife of James Sibley Watson), spent several years seeking a way to publicly commemorate him. Meanwhile Rush Rhees, president of the University of Rochester, had been looking for benefactors to help him add to the University's campus, then located on Prince Street in the City of Rochester. Hiram Sibley had some 30 years previous funded the construction of the University's library which displayed part of Sibley's art collection on its upper floor for a time, but Rhees wanted to construct a dedicated art gallery. The Rochester Art Club, which was the focal point for art enthusiasts of the area and which had exhibited and taught at art venues of the time (Reynolds Arcade, the Bevier Memorial Building, and the Powers Block) provided the manpower to staff the gallery. Rhees assembled a board of managers, including the Art Club's president, George L. Herdle, in November of 1912 and by the eighth of the following October, presided over the Gallery's opening. The inaugural exhibition consisted of paintings from dealers for sale, with the Gallery taking a 10% commission.^[2] The most wealthy families immediately gifted their purchases to the gallery to start its permanent collection.

The Gallery main entrance, also showing the Cutler Union

Exhibits in the early years of the Gallery consisted of loans from the private collections of George Eastman, the Sibleys, the Watsons, and other prominent Rochester families. Herdle labored mightily to keep the Gallery's walls filled with new works until his untimely death in 1922 at which point his daughter and University of Rochester graduate, Gertrude L. Herdle began what would become a 40 year career as the museum's director. Another daughter, Isabel C. Herdle, served in various curatorial roles during the same period after schooling at Harvard University the University of London, and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and stints at the Fogg and the de Young museums.

Directors

Name	Title	Tenure	Other affiliations
George L. Herdle	Director	November 1, 1912 – 1922	Rochester Art Club
Gertrude L. Herdle (later Gertrude H. Moore)	Director	1922 – June, 1962	University of Rochester
Harris K. Prior	Director	1962 – 1975	Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Museum
John A. Mahey	Director	October, 1975 – March 8, 1979	Cummer Art Gallery, Crocker Art Museum
Bruce W. Chambers	Acting director	March 9, 1979 – January 30, 1980	University of Iowa Museum of Art, Fashion Institute of Technology, Emory University, University of Rochester
A. Bret Waller	Director	January 31, 1980 – 1984	Michigan Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Art
Grant Holcomb	Director	1985 – present	Timken Gallery

In all of its years of operation, the Gallery has endured only two thefts:^[3] During a 1927 Buddhist exhibition, a youth made off with a Tibetan banner on loan from a local family. Some twenty years later, after the youth had developed into a career fencer, police recovered the banner from his small apartment. Also, in 1978, someone pinched Picasso's Flowers in a Blue Vase during a busy Sunday afternoon; the painting found its way back to the Gallery within three weeks.

The Gallery, though sited on the University of Rochester's campus, existed as a separate organization from the University until 1935, when Alan Valentine renegotiated the 1912 charter.^[4]

Today, the Gallery is supported primarily by its membership, the University of Rochester, and public funds from Monroe County and the New York State Council on the Arts.^[5]

Collections

The Gallery's permanent collection comprises some 11,000 objects, including works by Monet, Cézanne, Matisse, Homer and Cassatt. Contemporary masters in the collection include Wendell Castle, Albert Paley and Helen Frankenthaler. Other notable works include:

• Jean-Léon Gérôme's Interior of a Mosque, the only painting from Hiram Sibley's original collection still in the Gallery's possession
• Egyptian and Eastern Mediterranean antiquities from the collection of Herbert Ocumpaugh, a 19th century businessman
• Near East antiquities from the collection of Edwin Barber Morgan's son
• English and Continental silver from the 17th through 19th centuries from the collection of Ernest Woodward, heir to the Jell-O fortune
• George Eastman's collection of about 60 Old Master, British, Dutch, American, and French Barbizon School paintings
• El Greco's The Apparition of the Virgin to St. Hyacinth
• Portrait of Colonel Nathaniel Rochester, attributed to John James Audubon
• Woman in Red by Maud Humphrey. Her son, Humphrey Bogart, also loaned two of her sketches to a 1952 exhibition.
• William Congdon Eiffel Tower #1, Marion Stratton Gould Fund
• Milton Avery's Haircut by the Sea, donated by Roy Neuberger in 1963

The Gallery exhibited still photography and motion pictures until the 1949 opening of the George Eastman House.^[6]

The Gallery began featuring arts and crafts of various immigrant groups starting in 1919.^[7] Director George Herdle was known to ask Italian, Pole, Dane, Dutch, English, Near Eastern, Greek, Armenian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian families to loan items from their attics and basements.

Community involvement

Besides hosting exhibitions, classes, and educational programs, the Gallery puts on such major events as the biennial Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition and the annual Clothesline Festival.

• The Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition is a biennial competition for artwork from New York's 27 westernmost counties.^[8] It is judged by guest jurors, which have included Charles E. Burchfield, John Bauer, former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Thomas Messer, former director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Past winners include Wendell Castle, Albert Paley, Honoré Sharrer, Hans Christensen, Bill Stewart, Graham Marks, and Kathy Calderwood. It grew out of the Rochester Art Club's annual members-only exhibition starting in 1914, and became a separate event in 1938 under its current name.

• The Clothesline Festival is an open-air exhibition where visitors buy artwork directly from New York state exhibitors and enjoy live entertainment and family activities.^[9] The Gallery reluctantly initiated the Festival as an unjuried show in 1957 after the conclusion of a particularly acrimonious Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition,^[10] but the Festival has consistently proved a crowd-pleaser as well as a means to bolster the Gallery's budget.

Facilities

The museum is located on the University of Rochester's former Prince Street campus and consists of the following structures:

Structures

Name	Photo	Description
Main gallery	The fountain court in the main gallery	Inspired by the Tempio Malatestiano (which Averell had sketched in a visit to Italy), it was primarily executed by John Gade, though Claude Bragdon was nominally involved. A 1926 expansion designed by Stanford White's son doubled the floor and wall space and added the fountain court as a venue for live music performances. The fountain was designed by Gaston Lachaise and inspired by the Putto with Dolphin of the Palazzo Vecchio.
1968 wing	The 1968 entrance—still used as an entrance for group tours	The 1968 wing was built as an expansion to provide more configurable exhibit space.[11] It opened in August 1968.
The Cutler Union	The M&T Bank ballroom	Originally constructed as the women's student union for the University of Rochester, funded by a bequest from James Goold Cutler, it was first opened in September 1933.[12] The Gallery held classes in its basement for many years until the University gave it to the Gallery in 1987. It features a massive gothic spire.
The Vanden Brul pavilion	The Vanden Brul pavilion serves as a passage between the 1968 wing and the Cutler Union	An enclosed, skylit sculpture garden linking the 1968 wing to the Cutler Union, opened in May 1987, named for board member and donor Herbert W. Vanden Brul's parents[13]
The Gertrude Herdle Moore sculpture garden

References

1. ^ Brayer, Elizabeth (1988), MAGnum Opus: The Story of the Memorial Art Gallery, 1913 – 1988 (1 ed.), Rochester, New York: The Gallery, p. 2, ISBN 9780918098023, OCLC 18496839 
2. ^ Brayer, Elizabeth (1988), MAGnum Opus: The Story of the Memorial Art Gallery, 1913 – 1988 (1 ed.), Rochester, New York: The Gallery, p. 26, ISBN 9780918098023, OCLC 18496839 
3. ^ Brayer, Elizabeth (1988), MAGnum Opus: The Story of the Memorial Art Gallery, 1913 – 1988 (1 ed.), Rochester, New York: The Gallery, p. 170, ISBN 9780918098023, OCLC 18496839 
4. ^ Brayer, Elizabeth (1988), MAGnum Opus: The Story of the Memorial Art Gallery, 1913 – 1988 (1 ed.), Rochester, New York: The Gallery, p. 88, ISBN 9780918098023, OCLC 18496839 
5. ^ Public Relations Office (2010-10-10). "GALLERY FACT SHEET". Rochester, New York: Memorial Art Gallery. p. 1. http://mag.rochester.edu/news/mag_factsheet10.pdf. Retrieved 2011-05-03. 
6. ^ Brayer, Elizabeth (1988), MAGnum Opus: The Story of the Memorial Art Gallery, 1913 – 1988 (1 ed.), Rochester, New York: The Gallery, p. 106, ISBN 9780918098023, OCLC 18496839 
7. ^ Brayer, Elizabeth (1988), MAGnum Opus: The Story of the Memorial Art Gallery, 1913 – 1988 (1 ed.), Rochester, New York: The Gallery, p. 103, ISBN 9780918098023, OCLC 18496839 
8. ^ Public Relations Office (2009-08-10). "EXHIBITION FACT SHEET". Rochester, New York: Memorial Art Gallery. p. 2. http://mag.rochester.edu/news/fingerlakes09.pdf. Retrieved 2010-01-02. 
9. ^ "Clothesline Art Festival". Rochester, New York: Memorial Art Gallery. http://mag.rochester.edu/clothesline/. Retrieved 2010-01-02. 
10. ^ Brayer, Elizabeth (1988), MAGnum Opus: The Story of the Memorial Art Gallery, 1913 – 1988 (1 ed.), Rochester, New York: The Gallery, p. 99, ISBN 9780918098023, OCLC 18496839 
11. ^ Brayer, Elizabeth (1988), MAGnum Opus: The Story of the Memorial Art Gallery, 1913 – 1988 (1 ed.), Rochester, New York: The Gallery, p. 147, ISBN 9780918098023, OCLC 18496839 
12. ^ Brayer, Elizabeth (1988), MAGnum Opus: The Story of the Memorial Art Gallery, 1913 – 1988 (1 ed.), Rochester, New York: The Gallery, p. 63, ISBN 9780918098023, OCLC 18496839 
13. ^ Brayer, Elizabeth (1988), MAGnum Opus: The Story of the Memorial Art Gallery, 1913 – 1988 (1 ed.), Rochester, New York: The Gallery, p. 189, ISBN 9780918098023, OCLC 18496839 

External links

• Official website
• Rochester Art Club official website
• Arts and Cultural Council for Greater Rochester