Memorial Art Gallery


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. After Averell died at age 26, his mother, Emily 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. Rhees included a dedicated art gallery on a map of the campus as early as 1905. 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 supported the creation of the gallery. Since its establishment in 1912 the Gallery has existed as a department of the University with an independent board overseeing its collections and programs. Rush Rhees assembled the initial board of managers, including the Art Club's president, George L. Herdle, in November 1912 and by the eighth of the following October, presided over the Gallery's opening.
The inaugural exhibition, curated by George Herdle, consisted of contemporary American paintings, many of which were for sale, on loan from the artists or their dealers. Since the Gallery had no endowment for acquisitions in its first decades, exhibitions were an opportunity for donors to acquire works and then immediately gift their purchases to the gallery to start its permanent collection. Significant early gifts acquired from exhibitions included: Willard Metcalf's ', Joaquín Sorolla's ' and Paul Dougherty's .
George Herdle organized an ambitious exhibition schedule with multiple exhibitions changing monthly. Significant early exhibitions included the 1914 exhibition at which the original Kodachrome two-color process was introduced, and in 1919 a controversial solo exhibition by George Bellows. Annual exhibitions of the Rochester Art Club were also held at the Gallery. In the early years, these changing exhibitions were supplemented by summer loan exhibitions from the private collections of George Eastman, the Sibleys, the Watsons, and other prominent Rochester families. With Herdle's untimely death in 1922, 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 beginning in 1932 after schooling at the University of Rochester, with graduate work at Radcliffe College and Paul Sachs' museum studies course at the Fogg, the Courtauld Institute of Art, and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Before joining her sister at the Memorial Art Gallery, Isabel Herdle worked for one year at the de Young museum.
NameTitleTenureOther affiliations
George L. HerdleDirectorApril 16, 1914 – 1922Rochester Art Club
Gertrude L. Herdle
Director1923 – June, 1962University of Rochester
Harris K. PriorDirector1962–1975Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Museum
John A. MaheyDirectorOctober, 1975 – March 8, 1979Cummer Art Gallery, Crocker Art Museum
Bruce W. ChambersActing directorMarch 9, 1979 – January 30, 1980University of Iowa Museum of Art, Fashion Institute of Technology, Emory University, University of Rochester
A. Bret WallerDirectorJanuary 31, 1980 – 1984Michigan Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Art
Grant HolcombDirector1985 – July 1, 2014Timken Gallery
Jonathan P. BinstockDirectorJuly 8, 2014 – presentPennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Corcoran Gallery of Art

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.

Collections

The Gallery's permanent collection comprises some 12,000 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:
The permanent collection includes more than 500 objects from the collections of four generations of the Sibley and Watson families.

Educational Programs

The Gallery offered programs for area school children as early as 1914. By 1927, a regular program of community art classes for children and adults was established, which by 1949 became known as the . Today the Gallery offers extensive and intensive K-12 school programs, accessibility programs for individuals with vision or hearing impairment, and community programs for individuals with dementia and their care partners. The Gallery also offers collaborative programs with area colleges and universities and an innovative protocol using the visual arts to enhance skills of observation for medical students and health practitioners.

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 museum is located on the University of Rochester's former Prince Street campus and consists of the following structures:
NamePhotoDescription
Main galleryInspired by the Tempio Malatestiano, it was primarily executed by John Gade, though Claude Bragdon was nominally involved. A designed by Stanford White's son Lawrence White doubled the floor and wall space and added the Fountain Court as a venue for live music performances. The fountain was a 20th-century reproduction after Andrea del Verrocchio's Putto with Dolphin of the Palazzo Vecchio. It houses paintings by Baroque Period painters,including El Greco,Paolo Paolini,Luca Giordano,Domenico Feti,Claude Lorrain,Francesco Solimena,and Francesco Guardi.
1968 wingThe 1968 wing was built as an expansion to provide more configurable exhibit space. It opened in August 1968. It houses American Art, including paintings by John Singleton Copley, George Harvey, John Kensett, Lilly Martin Spencer, John Sloan, Milton Avery, Georgia O'Keeffe, Colin Campbell Cooper, Winslow Homer and Hans Hofmann.
The Cutler Union ballroomOriginally 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. 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 pavilionAn 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
Centennial Sculpture ParkMAG's Centennial Sculpture Park has recast ten acres of the Gallery’s grounds into a showcase of public art and urban space. Major installations by Wendell Castle, Jackie Ferrara, Tom Otterness, Albert Paley and Jim Sanborn are featured on the grounds, while Poets Walk and Story Walk invoke and inspire connections to Rochester history through poems and stories along University Avenue and Goodman Street.