[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Museum08.jpg” caption=”The McMaster Museum of Art is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year. The Museum has launched a special exhibition celebrating the milestone as well as the University’s own 125th anniversary. The exhibition runs until August 25. File photo.”]Works by Claude Monet, Andy Warhol and Canada's own A.Y. Jackson are helping
McMaster's Museum of Art celebrate two milestone anniversaries.

As part of McMaster's 125th anniversary, the Museum of Art – which is marking its own
45th birthday this year – has launched 125 & 45: an interrogative spirit. The exhibition
highlights landmark moments in the University's history as well as key contributors to
the Museum's extensive collection.

“It pays tribute to the donors and philanthropists who have graciously contributed to
our permanent collection,” said Ihor Holubizky, the Museum's senior curator. “The
works we've selected are also representative of the University and of arts and sciences –
they speak to the radical shift in the way artists see the world.”

Among the works on display is Monet's Waterloo Bridge, Effet de Soleil. The painting is
part of a large collection donated and funded by Herman H. Levy.

Andy Warhol's Hamburger, also on display, was a gift from Gordon Eberts, who donated
more than 300 works to the Museum. The acrylic and silkscreen painting was finished
just one year before the iconic pop artist's death.

The exhibition will also be the first public appearance of the oil painting Girl in the
Middy. Painted by the Group of Seven's A.Y. Jackson in 1913, the work has spent the
last 80 years in the family collection of McMaster alumni J. Russell and Winifred
Hewetson.

A number of other works are from the years 1887 and 1967, the University and
Museum's founding years, as well as the “halfway points” of 1949 and 1990.

McMaster has commissioned artwork for display in offices and ceremonial spaces since
its inception, but it was only after a donation of European prints by the Carnegie
Institute in the 1930s that the University began systematically collecting works to
encourage art appreciation by students and the public.

In 1967, the first designated space for a gallery was opened and administered by the
Department of Art and Art History. In 1994, the Museum opened its doors to the
general public.

125 & 45 runs until August 25.