This week the Canada Council for the Arts announced the winners of the 2014 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Congratulations to artists Kim Adams, Sandra Brownlee, Max Dean, Raymond Gervais, Angela Grauerholz, Jayce Salloum, Carol Wainio, and curator Brydon Smith!

The McMaster Museum of Art is particularly pleased and proud to have three of the award winners represented in and within our collection – the art of Max Dean and Angela Grauerholz, and the visionary collection building of curator Brydon Smith.

Max Dean – Multidisciplinary visual artist, Toronto . In 2012, the Museum purchased his 2011 Chromogenic print, Chair without Front Legs (shown above) with funds from the Donald Murray Shepherd Trust. It was exhibited in the 2012 exhibition, The Last Things Before the Last.

Angela Grauerholz – Photographer/visual artist, Montreal. In 2008, the Museum purchased Angela Grauerholz’s ink jet print, The Mirror, 2007-2008, with funds from the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation. The work was exhibited at McMaster in a 2008 Recent Acquisitions show, in a solo 2010 exhibition, and in the 2011 exhibition, Rising to the Occasion: The Long 18th Century.

Hamilton-born Brydon Smith was a student in the Science program at McMaster University in the early 1960s. At that time, he began reviewing art for the McMaster University newspaper and discovered his passion for art. In 1961-62, he was Chair of the Wentworth House Art Committee, a student group which organized exhibitions and acquired works of art that are now part of McMaster Museum of Art’s collection. The 66 works of art purchased during Smith’s tenure include works by Leonard Baskin, Pierre Bonnard, André Derain, Lutz Dille, Anne Kahane, Paul Fournier and others. Smith went on to shape the cultural landscape of Canada as a curator and arts administrator: his exhibitions and acquisitions, principally at the National Gallery of Canada, have contributed significantly to the histories of both Canadian and American art.