1924: Edmonton and the Beginnings of the Art Gallery of Alberta
On August 18, 1924, twenty years after Edmonton became a city, the Edmonton Museum of Arts (now Art Gallery of Alberta) incorporated, becoming the first Canadian art museum west of Winnipeg. Without a budget, building, collection or staff, the Museum was spearheaded by the vision and leadership of one woman, Maud Bowman, with backing from a group of the city’s artists, politicians, businessmen and professionals. Within its first year of operation, the Museum hosted two visiting artists, presented a prodigious exhibition with significant loans from the National Gallery of Canada, and began a permanent art collection through purchase and donation.
In the early 1920s, however, a museum in Edmonton was not an easy sell. A series of boom-and-bust cycles in the late 19th century and first decade of the 20th century led to great economic disparity, compounded by the onset of WWI. While the arts were not a priority for most of the city’s residents, high culture played a central role in the lives of a small group of elite citizens. The Museum’s founders, particularly Bowman, argued that the visual arts were important not only for enjoyment but for “guide[ing] the mind into productive and inspiring channels.” This group believed that an art museum had the potential to uplift and enlighten the city’s inhabitants as a whole. These lofty goals privileged artists and audiences of the middle and upper classes, whose values and education were rooted in western European traditions, while ignoring large swaths of the local population as well as the history and contemporary realities of Indigenous peoples.
This exhibition traces the early activities of the visual arts in Edmonton leading up to the formation of the Edmonton Museum of Arts and places this history within the wider context of the city in the early 1920s. While this is not a comprehensive history, key moments in Edmonton’s development are considered while critically examining the dominant settler perspective from which the Museum was formed.
Organized by the Art Gallery of Alberta and curated by Danielle Siemens.
The Visual Arts in Edmonton Before 1924
When the Edmonton Museum of Arts formed in 1924, the visual arts in Edmonton were in their infancy. There were no permanent spaces for the display or collecting of art nor was there post-secondary instruction in fine arts or art history. However, since at least 1911, there were various individual and collective efforts to bring art exhibitions and education to the city, and Edmontonians enjoyed temporary art displays on an annual basis. This period also saw the first professional artists move to Edmonton and establish studios in the downtown core, some of whom became the city’s first art teachers. Although men figure prominently as leaders of early organizing efforts, women and women’s societies played a critical role in helping to build the arts scene in Edmonton.
1920s Edmonton
The 1920s in Edmonton were not as roaring as they were elsewhere as the city faced the impacts of World War I and the influenza pandemic. By 1924, Edmonton’s population was 63,160 –nearly ten thousand less than at the end of its last major boom in 1914. However, the early 20s saw some modest recovery and a series of social and technological advancements: aviation was beginning to take off, natural gas began to be pumped to the city, prohibition came to an end, and labour organizing gained momentum. Arts and leisure also saw milestones with the first concert of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, the first radio broadcast, and the Edmonton Grads women’s basketball team rising to international fame.
The Founders
In the fall of 1923 Maud Bowman, representing the Local Council of Women, approached the Edmonton Art Club and Edmonton Art Association with the goal of securing a permanent art collection for the city to be housed in the new Public Library. Following public consultation, The Permanent Art and Historical Museum Association was formed, and before the end of the year, officers were appointed and charged with drafting a constitution. The Edmonton Museum of Arts was officially incorporated on August 18, 1924 with the following purpose:
The plan of operation of the association shall be to establish, own and control and to maintain museums, galleries and libraries; to acquire books, manuscripts, and scientific collections and objects of fine and industrial arts; to institute and support schools, and to provide lectures, instruction and entertainment in the furtherance of the general purpose of the Society.
With the exception of Bowman and Secretary E.M. Switzer, the original board was made up entirely of men from the city’s business and political elite. Members included doctors, lawyers, politicians, professors, artists and a reverend, nearly all of whom settled in Edmonton from the United Kingdom or Ontario.
The First Exhibition
The Edmonton Museum of Arts’ first exhibition took place in the Palm Room (now the Wedgewood Room) of the Hotel Macdonald from October 30 to November 1, 1924. Admission was 10 cents and reportedly over 2000 guests viewed the exhibition. A selection of works were then installed across the street in the lecture room of the Public Library where people could see the display for free three days a week until April of the following year.
The Palm Room exhibition was an ambitious undertaking with a total of 137 artworks, including 24 on loan from the National Gallery, alongside loans from local collectors and artists associated with the Edmonton Art Club. In keeping with the Edmonton Museum of Arts’ mandate at the time, the exhibition also included a display of objects of historical interest. Newspaper reviews described the show as a great success, commenting that the display was “striking evidence of the cultural progress” of Edmonton. For the next four years, the Museum held an annual fall exhibition in the Palm Room before moving their offices and gallery into vacant space in the Civic Block in 1927.
As immigrants from Britain and Ontario, the founders of the Edmonton Museum of Arts primarily belonged to the city’s White elite and viewed the arts as a key component in elevating the status of Edmonton and educating its citizenry. The art they promoted, which privileged landscape painting, was likewise made by artists of English heritage and/or training. If included at all, works from ‘other’ cultures were relegated to the historical section of the Museum’s exhibitions and collection, such as the Indigenous materials included in the first exhibition, and Egyptian “curios” in the 1925 exhibition. While paintings and sculptures created by living Canadian and European artists were celebrated as individual artistic achievements on one side of the gallery, the aesthetic traditions of entire cultures were reduced to a handful of objects, arranged without regard for cultural context and identified only by ethnicity or time period. A common museum practice at the time, the contrast between artistic and ethnographic displays served to reinforce harmful ethnocentric ideas, placing Indigenous and colonized cultures in the historical past while associating western traditions with the present and future.
While the majority of Edmonton’s immigrants at the time were American or British, 1921 census records for Alberta show a diversity of settlers from Russia, China, Romania, Italy, Ukraine, Japan, India and South Africa, amongst others.
Additional Facts
First Officers and Executive
Honorary President: Lieutenant-Governor Robert Brett, a trained physician and 2nd lieutenant governor of Alberta (1915-1925)
Honorary Vice Presidents:
Dr. R.B. Wells, 1st ophthalmologist at the U of A
Rev. J. McCartney Wilson, of the First Presbyterian Church
Lucien Dubuc, Alberta judge and the first to allow proceedings in French in 1924
Dr. J.M. MacEachran, psychologist who helped develop the psychology and philosophy
departments at the U of A and chairman of the Alberta Eugenics Board (1928-65)
President: Maud Bowman
Vice-President: W.E. Edmunds
Secretary: Miss. E.M. Switzer
Treasurer: John A. McDougall, businessman and politician who served as municipal councillor, mayor and a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. He founded McDougall & Secord Ltd. (1897-1907) with Richard Secord, a general merchant operation that did major business buying Métis Land Scrip and re-selling it at a profit.
Executive Committee:
E.L. Hill, founder and 1st director of Edmonton Public Library
R.W. Hedley, art supervisor for public schools and founder of the Edmonton Art Association
William Johnstone, painter, art teacher and 1st president of the Edmonton Art Club
James Adam, 1st professor of drawing and descriptive geometry at the U of A
John Imrie, managing director of the Edmonton Journal (1921-41) and advocate for press freedom
C.S. Burgess, architect and town planner
Major Frank Norbury, sculptor, art teacher and art critic for the Edmonton Journal
Col. C.Y. Weaver, politician and lawyer
Maud Bowman
Maud Bowman was not a conventional model of a female museum leader. She was not an artist, she had no prior education in museum or library studies, nor did she have the personal financial means to build a private collection. However, she was deeply invested in the arts ecosystem of Edmonton, participating in the Women’s Musical Club and the local branch of the Women’s Art Association. These memberships connected Bowman to a national network of women interested in the arts and to the Local Council of Women, lending her the political influence necessary to rally support in establishing the city’s first museum. While she may not have come up through the museum world, she travelled widely and was well connected, regularly attending conferences and meetings with museum professionals throughout North America. She was also passionate about art education and in 1934 established children’s art classes, which continue to this day in the AGA’s Education program.