Agnes Etherington Art Centre

• Name — Agnes Etherington Art Centre • Established — 1957 • Location — 36 University Avenue, Kingston, Ontario, Canada • Type — Art museum • Director — Emelie Chhangur • Website — http: agnes.queensu.ca

The Agnes Etherington Art Centre has its roots in the Kingston Art and Music Club, founded in 1926, and owes its existence to Agnes McCausland Richardson Etherington (1880–1954), a driving force behind the club. Agnes Etherington's grandfather had founded the grain dealer James Richardson & Sons in 1857 and the family had become very wealthy. Agnes's brother George Richardson, who died fighting in World War I in 1916, left a legacy for her to use as she felt fit to stimulate development of the arts at Queen's University. She used this to found the George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund, which still provides an important source of arts funding to the university. Agnes Etherington bequeathed her house, an elegant Neo-Georgian mansion, to Queen's University for use as a university and community art gallery. The Agnes Etherington Art Centre opened to the public in 1957. The building was extended in 1962, 1975, 1978 and 2000, and now has an area of 1,720 square metres.

In addition to the historical Etherington House and nine galleries, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre features a studio, atrium, a publications lounge and the David McTavish Art Study Room.

Through the fall and winter, lectures, discussions, tours, custom seminars and screenings. Each summer, the gallery offers an art-intensive summer day camp for children and an art course of teens.

The Canadian Historical collection primarily representing the history of Canadian fine art in the Euro-American tradition, it also reflects the evolving Canadian cultural matrix through Inuit and Indigenous art and artifacts, as well as historic dress and decorative arts. The collection is notable for fine early topographical watercolours and major 20th-century paintings, and encompasses material connected to regional history in the Queen's University Collection of Canadian Dress, the Heritage Quilt Collection, and the Silver Collection. The Canadian historical collection includes works by: Andre Charles Bieler, Tom Thomson, Emily Carr, Lawren Harris, Arthur Lismer, Frederick Varley, Edwin Holgate, LeMoine FitzGerald, Fernand Leduc, Ozias Leduc, David Milne, William Ronald, Carl Beam, William Henry Bartlett, William Brymner, Kananginak Pootoogook, Pitseolak Ashoona

The Contemporary Art Collection features visual art, with emphasis on the emerging generation of artists and works that reflect contemporary life and Canadian society. It is national in scope. The Contemporary collection includes works by: Charles Stankievech, Rebecca Belmore, Judy Radul, Brendan Fernandes, Luis Jacob, Vera Frenkel, David Rokeby, Norman White, Robert Houle, Shary Boyle, AA Bronson, General Idea, Ian Carr-Harris, Sarindar Dhaliwal, Andre Fauteux, Kim Ondaatje, Derek Sullivan

• Illustration — Alfred Bader with his first wife Helen, who wrote the first catalog of their collection in 1974. Here shown standing before a painting they gifted to their son David. The European Art Collection holds many paintings, prints, and drawings of exceptional quality and depth. The heart of the European collection is the Bader collection, with over 200 paintings donated by philanthropist Alfred Bader together with his first wife Helen, and later together with his second wife Isabel. The Baders also gifted the Bader Acquisition Fund to enable the museum to make additional purchases, and the Bader Chair in Northern Baroque Art. Alfred Bader's first donated painting in 1967 was a Salvator Mundi once owned by his mother. Most of the paintings he and Helen collected during the 1970s were religious scenes by Dutch and Flemish artists, a hobby he continued with his second wife Isabel in the 1980s, though by that time the couple was actively shopping across Europe for paintings they could directly donate to the museum with an eye to expanding the collection for educational purposes. Isabel had been a teacher in a girls' school in Bexhill-on-Sea for over 25 years and had become an expert in historical clothing and textiles. She donated her collection of historical costumes in the 1970s to the museum in Bexhill-on-Sea and founded a drama school there. It was thanks to her that Herstmonceux Castle later became the couple's gift in 1993 to Queen's University as the couple returned often to Bexhill-on-Sea and were enthusiastic upon hearing the nearby castle was for sale. After Alfred passed in 2018 Isabel continued to make donations from the couple's collection to Agnes Etherington Art Centre, and her bequest in 2022 included 44 paintings and was valued at a breathtaking $12 million dollars.

Numbering over 500 objects, the Justin and Elisabeth Lang Collection of African Art ranks among Canada's most comprehensive and significant African Art collections. Comprising primarily works by West and Central African peoples.