Judith Nasby, founding director and curator of the Macdonald Stewart Art
Centre, animates the story of the gallery from its humble beginnings in
the hallways of a university campus in 1916 to its latest incarnation as
the internationally recognized Art Gallery of Guelph. The book is
beautifully illustrated with eighty images of artworks in the permanent
collection, beginning with the gallery's first acquisition, Tom
Thomson's 1917 masterpiece The Drive, the last large canvas he painted
before his tragic death. As curator, Nasby oversaw the creation of one
of the most comprehensive sculpture parks in Canada and the amassing of
a permanent collection of some nine thousand artworks. In The Making of
a Museum Nasby reveals how the museum developed its internationally
recognized collection of contemporary Inuit drawings and wall hangings
that toured four continents. She discusses the development of the
collection's specializations in contemporary works by Canadian
silversmiths; historical European etchings; Woodland and Northeastern
Indigenous beadwork; and others that arose from curatorial
collaborations, such as molas by Kuna women artists from Panama and
contemporary paintings and indigenous woodcuts from Chongqing, China.
Nasby recounts her long career as founding director and curator,
peppering the hundred-year history of cultural development on the
University of Guelph campus and in the city with humorous anecdotes and
personal insights to reveal how arts institutions can be created through
dedication, serendipity, and perseverance.
