Did you know it’s been 73 years since the first volunteer committee was formed at the AGO? Gallery Guide Susan Morrison has delved into the archives – Follow her new multi-part series on the contributions of the AGO’s Women’s / Volunteer Committees to the gallery’s collections. This week: how her project got started.
Cupola, Franz Kline. 1959-60 (gift of Women’s Committee 1962)
When the three AGO galleries focusing on modern art (1900-1960) opened last year, I spent some time in them in order to prepare a feature tour that would focus on the rehang. One thing that struck me was that there were 13 artworks whose labels indicated that they had been given to the AGO by one of three volunteer committees: the Women’s Committee, the Volunteer Committee, and the Junior Women’s Committee.
I have always been interested in provenance – in this instance, how an individual artwork came to be hanging in the AGO. So my questions were: What were these committees that contributed such outstanding artworks to the AGO’s collection as Franz Kline’s Cupola 1959-60 (gifted by the WC in 1962), Picasso’s Seated Woman 1928 (bought with assistance of the WC and the JWC), and Naum Gabo’s Linear Construction in Space No. 1 1942-9 (gifted by the VC in 1986)? And did they select the artworks themselves, or were they following a curator’s wishes?
As I investigated the materials available to me, I realized that the information I was uncovering could be of interest to all AGO volunteers, and especially to those of us who deal with these artworks on a regular basis – a kind of, “Where did we come from, what are we doing, where are we going?” (to appropriate the title of one of Gauguin’s Tahitian paintings).
Consequently, this on-going column titled Connections and Collections will look at the contribution of the Women’s Committee (renamed the Volunteer Committee in 1974) as well as the Junior Women’s Committee, to the collecting practices of the AGO, with emphases on buying trends and the purchase of specific artworks.
Next time: Foundations