Robert McMichael; gallery founder (Group of Seven)
Hyfler/Rosner
November 20, 2003 Thursday National Edition
Gallery founder championed the Group of Seven: Robert McMichael
SOURCE: National Post
BYLINE: James Cowan
Robert McMichael had a vision for the gallery that bore his name, and he was
willing to fight all the way to the Supreme Court to maintain it.
The 82-year-old founder of the McMichael Gallery of Canadian Art died on
Tuesday of pneumonia resulting from the complications of a broken hip.
The sometimes ornery McMichael dedicated his life to championing the Group
of Seven and establishing his gallery as a repository for their work.
"The McMichael was never intended to be a general art gallery, some place
just to get people to hang pictures or keep up with the times," McMichael
once said. "It was to carry the work of a period of Canadian art and a group
of great painters, who I still believe are the greatest we have ever
produced."
Born in 1921, McMichael grew up in Toronto and attended Humberside
Collegiate before serving in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World
War. After the war, he became a professional photographer and opened his own
studio in 1946. The business soon expanded to include advertising work and
packages for newly married couples. By the end of the Fifties, McMichael's
company had a branch office in New York City.
Meanwhile, the photographer met Signe Sorensen, who worked in radio
advertising, and the pair married in 1949. Two years later, the couple
purchased four hectares of land in the village of Kleinburg, Ont. They spent
a year building a log house on the property and named their new home
Tapawingo (a native word that roughly translates as "House of Joy").
In 1955, the McMichaels bought their first piece of Canadian art. It was a
small painting by Lawren Harris titled Montreal River. Works by Tom Thomson,
Emily Carr, David Milne and members of the Group of Seven soon followed.
Not only did the McMichaels collect work by the artists, they also made
friends with many of the group's members. A.J. Casson and his wife served as
hosts at the McMichael Gallery when its owners were out of town. In 1964,
A.Y. Jackson and McMichael submitted a design for the new Canadian flag.
Jackson also lived with the McMichaels during the last six years of his life
as the gallery's artist-in-residence.
The McMichaels opened their home and its growing gallery to the public in
the early Sixties. Then, in 1965, the couple gave their log house, its
surrounding land and their collection of 194 pieces of art to the Province
of Ontario. Subsequent to the donation, McMichael was named director of the
McMichael Canadian Art Collection. He served in that capacity until 1981.
After stepping down as director, McMichael became increasingly agitated by
the gallery's acquisition of art that fell outside its original mandate --
the collection of work by the Group of Seven and its contemporaries. He
later expressed rage at the gallery staff who wandered from this mandate.
"We came with a list of 17 artists, all great Canadian artists, and that
total did it. For as long as I was director, it stayed that way. But it was
only a matter of a short time after, that unwanted pictures started to come
in, simply because curators and other staff members wanted to see the
numbers go up. They wanted to be heroes and have thousands of pictures in
the collection, which apparently, in their opinion, made them heroes,"
McMichael said.
In 1996, the McMichaels launched a lawsuit against the Ontario government,
alleging the gallery board had violated the terms of the 1965 agreement that
established the gallery. The couple claimed that one-third of the 6,000
works owned by the gallery did not belong in its collection. McMichael
focused his ire on Babylon, a steel sculpture composed of seven large
blocks, by Canadian John McEwen. According to a trial judge, McMichael felt
the work "mocked the values that gave rise to the collection."
The McMichaels won their initial case but the ruling was overturned on
appeal. In 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the case.
Nonetheless, McMichael eventually regained control of his collection. In
2001, an audit of the McMichael Gallery revealed a deficit of $1.6-million.
The government blamed the financial woes on the decision to broaden the
gallery's mandate and passed a bill establishing both Robert and Signe
McMichael as life members of the Board of Trustees.
Robert McMichael will be buried on the gallery grounds, beside six members
of the Group of Seven. He is survived by Signe, his wife.