Memorial Art Gallery

The Memorial Art Gallery is a civic art museum in 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.^{[citation needed]} It is a focal point of fine arts activity in the region and hosts the biennial Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition and the annual Clothesline Festival.^{[citation needed]}

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 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.^[2] 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) supported the creation of the gallery.^[3] Since its establishment in 1912 the Gallery has existed as a department of the University with an independent board overseeing its collections and programs.^[4] 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.^[5] 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 [Golden Carnival],^[6] Joaquín Sorolla's [Oxen on the Beach]^[7] and Paul Dougherty's [Coast of Cornwall, near St. Ives].^[8]

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,

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.^[13]

Provenance

• George Eastman's collection of about 60 Old Master, British, Dutch, American, and French Barbizon School paintings,^[14] including Rembrandt's Portrait of a Young Man in an Armchair^[15]
• The Encyclopedia Britannica collection of twentieth-century American art^[16]
• The Charles Rand Penney collection^[17]
• Egyptian and Eastern Mediterranean antiquities from the collection of Herbert Ocumpaugh, a 19th-century businessman
• Near East antiquities from the collection of Frederic Grinnell Morgan of Aurora, NY^[18]
• English and Continental silver from the 17th through 19th centuries from the collection of Ernest Woodward, heir to the Jell-O fortune

• The permanent collection includes more than 500 objects from the collections of four generations of the Sibley and Watson families.^[19]

Collection

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. Works include:

• Blue Prism Painting I by Josiah McElheny, 2014.^[20]
• Breaking the Pose by Jerome Witkin, 1986.^[21]
• Colonel Nathaniel Rochester by John James Audubon, before 1831.^[22]
• Crested Swans by John Scholl, ca. 1910.^[23]
• Harem Scene by Daniel Israel, 1895-1900.^[24]
• Interior of a Gothic Church by Paul Vredeman de Vries, 1595.^[25]
• Interior of a Mosque by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1890-1899.^[26] It is the only painting from Hiram Sibley's original collection still in the Gallery's possession. ^{[citation needed]}
• On a French River by Emma Lampert Cooper.^[27]
• Portrait of a Young Man in an Armchair by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, ca. 1660.^[15]
• Seer by Helen Frankenthaler, 1980.^[28]
• Seer Bonnet XVI (Sarah Ann) by Angela Ellsworth, 2010-2011.^[29]
• Statue of Venus Obliterated by Infinity Nets by Yaoyi Kusama, 1998.^[30]
• The Apparition of the Virgin to St. Hyacinth by El Greco, ca. 1605-1610.^[31] It is the first work to be acquired from the Gallery's Marion Stratton Gould endowment.^{[citation needed]}
• The Entombment by Luca Giordano, 1650-1653.^[32]
• The Fable of Fox and Heron by Frans Snyders, ca. 1630-1640.^[33]
• Tiffany Studios, after 1915.^[34]
• The Wanderer by George Grosz, 1943.^[35]
• The West Wind by Thomas Ridgeway Gould.^[36]
• Three Fujins by Hung Liu, 1995.^[37]
• Woman Fixing Her Hair by Elizabeth Catlett.^[38]