December 2011 Newsletter

December 2011

GENERAL INFORMATION

Hours Monday to Friday 10 am - 4 pm

Closed Weekends Closed Dec 23 to Jan 3

Admission $5.00 Adults

$4.00 Seniors/ Students Children under 12 Free.

We honour select reciprocal memberships, please ask for

details.

A Message from our President…

116 Queenston St. Queenston, ON L0S 1L0 . 905-262-4510 . www.riverbrink.org P a g e 1

RiverBrink ReviewRiverBrink ReviewRiverBrink Review

I’ve been thinking about the public’s knowledge of RiverBrink over the past few months. My neigh-bours in Queenston, for example, are all aware that the museum exists, but so many of them haven’t been to visit. Is there anything we can do? Of course there is, and it’s been happening for some-time now. First, the giant cedar hedge came down last winter. I’m amazed at the number of people from the Niagara region who have said to me, “I knew about RiverBrink, but I was never really sure where it

was. Since the hedge came down, you can see it from the Parkway.” The large sign on the building also helps. Most people today use the Internet to learn about places to visit, even if they’re locals. Thanks to Brian Kremen, our marketing expert, much has happened to make RiverBrink’s virtual presence a reality. First, Brian changed our location from Queenston to Niagara-on-the-Lake. There has been some grumbling about this, but — and this is crucial —people are finding us through the web. Visitors to our area look up Niagara before they start their journey. Queenston is a place they stum-ble across. (They love it when they get here!) We also have a Facebook page. Since it was launched in September, we have been friended by over 500 people, who receive regular updates about museum activities. Another method of making our presence felt is through our Sunday lec-tures. Gary Essar left us well prepared when he retired last June with a series of excellent speakers. As the summer progressed, the number of people who attended grew. The series ended in November, after the museum had officially closed for the season, yet still people came to hear our speaker. The line up for next year is already available, so why don’t you plan to come to hear some very interesting talks that take the War of 1812 as their starting point? Other events that drew people to RiverBrink in the fall include our first ever gala. Artful Indulgences raised over $7,000, which will be used to help make the building more accessible to more people. Arts & Blooms partnered RiverBrink with the Garden Club of Niagara. The floral dis-plays the club members created interpreted pieces from the RiverBrink permanent collection in unique and wonderful ways. Several hundred people visited during the three-day event in October.

Continued on page 2

President/ Treasurer: Linda Fritz

Vice-President: Denis Greenall

Secretary:

Sandra G.Lawrence

Directors At

Large: John Arnold Margaret G.

Ferguson James A. (Jay) Richardson Gary Zalepa Arthur Zinn

2010-2011 Board of Directors

RiverBrink Staff Interim Curator: Debra Antoncic

Director of

Marketing and Development: Brian Kremen

Administrator:

Greta Hildebrand

Curatorial Intern Kate Woltz

Janitor:

Carmen Robichaud

Contract Assistance:

Bookkeeper:

Lil Sawyer

Gardener: John Vandenberg

Lawn

Maintenance: Warren Wills

Snow Removal:

Dean Montgomery

Meet Our Curatorial Intern

Linda Fritz

A Message From our Interim Curator…

Kate Woltz is a recent graduate of the Master of Museum Studies programme at University of Toronto. Her profes-sional background and education fo-cused on collections management and information management systems. She has previously worked with database management systems at the Royal On-tario Museum and the University of To-ronto Art Centre. Here at RiverBrink, she has been working towards upload-ing records and photographs of the col-lection to the Canadian Heritage Infor-mation Network's Artefacts Canada da-tabase. This database is accessible to the community as a research source, benefiting professionals, academics, students and the general public. Having RiverBrink's collection online allows us to be a part of an ongoing national dia-logue about the significance of collec-tions to Canadian national identity. Kate hopes to upload over 1400 records from the RiverBrink collection while en-hancing records with new research and helping out with other curatorial work.

This has been a very busy fall season at River-Brink. To start things off, we hosted a very suc-cessful fundraising gala, organized by volunteers and supported by RiverBrink staff. The success of the evening, our first such event (kudos to Carole Berlove!) and the money raised for our Accessibil-ity Fund, establish this as a significant achieve-ment. We hope that this event will continue in the future, and that more volunteers will come forward to lend a hand. Our lecture series was also very successful, with

talks by Dennis Reid, Charles Pachter and Heather Beecroft well at-tended by members and other visitors. We extended the season with the final lecture in November, a strategy that paid off with strong atten-dance. We hope to maintain this momentum into the upcoming sea-son. Look for the complete list of topics and speakers for 2012 under “Sundays at RiverBrink” in the newsletter. In between these events, we have been busy de-installing and re-installing for Art and Blooms and the Rotary Holiday House Tour. Art works on loan for our summer exhibition Off The Wall: Art Treasures from Niagara Collections, were taken down, wrapped and returned safely to their owners. In this project, I was ably assisted by Board member Sandra Lawrence and graduate intern Kate Woltz. I again thank both of them and also thank those of you who loaned art to the exhibition and helped make it a success. Finally, planning for the upcoming 2012 season continues. We are awaiting final details of the arrival of the Portrait of Isaac Brock from Guernsey and busy with research for the exhibition RiverBrink’s War of 1812. Volunteer Cameron Ward is assisting with curatorial duties associated with the exhibition and has also generously agreed to loan several pieces from his collection. The exhibition and attendant activi-ties associated with the 1812 Bicentennial commemoration promises to make next year an exciting one at RiverBrink. While selecting holiday and winter scenes from the permanent collec-tion to accompany the Rotary House tour decorations, I came across an interesting lithograph in the collection. Sleigh Scene, Toronto Bay, Canada West 1853 was drawn by a British artist, Lieutenant J.T. Downman and printed by a publishing company in London, England. It is a depiction of a scene in the Toronto harbour in the winter of 1842-43. Officers from the 83rd Regiment are shown enjoying an afternoon outing with friends. The scene in-cludes horse-drawn sleighs and skaters on the frozen lake in front of Fort York. Such captivating winter scenes were a staple of de-pictions of Canada in the 19th century and helped to promote the idea of Canada as a winter playground. Unfortunately I was unable to include the work in the exhibition due to its condition. There is a tear in the paper, additional damage to the support under-neath, some cracking and it also requires cleaning. This condition highlights the need for a conservation program at the museum.


Debra Antoncic

A Message From Our President ...

(continued)

Most recently, the museum worked with the Niagara-on-the-Lake Rotary Club for their Holiday House Tour on December 2 and 3. 744 people participated in the tour. So RiverBrink Art Museum is on the map. The 2012 exhibit, RiverBrink’s War of 1812, curated by Debra Antoncic and Cameron Ward will open on the Victoria Day weekend. In the meantime, if you’d like to come and visit, drop by the mu-seum Monday through Friday, between the hours of 10am and 4pm.

New Mystery in the RiverBrink Collection

As many of you may know, Tom Thomson’s preparatory sketch for the Jack Pine (c.1916) from the RiverBrink collection is currently on exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, England. The exhibition has been very well received with extensive press coverage in Canada as well as in the U.K., on television, in print me-dia and on the internet. As a bonus, our little sketch is featured on the cover of the exhibition catalogue. Just after Christmas the exhibition will travel to the National Museum of Art, Archi-tecture and Design in Oslo, Norway and then on to the Groninger Museum in Groningen, Netherlands. We will welcome the sketch back next fall after a busy year abroad.


Like many museums, RiverBrink is home to a few mysteries. Plumbing the depths of any collection turns up surprises, sending the curatorial team down the rabbit hole of research into artists, provenance and con-text. This season, with focus on pieces in the collection that tell us about the War of 1812, I came across many references to a pair of prints depicting the attack and storming of Fort Oswego, a New York State fortification on the shores of Lake Ontario, in 1814. I was intrigued to find that we had one of the prints in the collection – and the original watercolour drawing of the other! Database records attributed the original, The At-tack on Fort Oswego, to “John Thomas Serres or Dominic Serres”, fa-ther and son maritime painters to King George III. The Serreses moved in fashionable circles, and J.T.’s wife was well known for being a pre-tender to the British throne. The Serreses and their lives were interesting enough, but what I could not understand was why neither Serres was given attribution as the original artist of the subsequent engravings. Instead, the only attribution given was “Cap.t Steele, Delint”, meaning, from a drawing by Captain Steele. I began to look at the Serres family of painters and discovered that most certainly Dominic Serres had not been involved in drawing the Attack, having died in London in 1793. But more interestingly, I could find no reference at all to J.T. Serres ever having been in North Amer-ica. He was in a debtor’s prison around 1810, having been ruined by the excesses of his wife and her claims to the estate of the Duke of Cumberland, whom she be-lieved to be her biological father. He is known to have been a master of maritime painting at the Royal Naval College, for parts of the early 19th century. It seemed less and less likely that J.T. Serres had produced the watercolour. I turned instead to exploring the mysterious Captain Steele. Since there were numerous Captains Steele on both the British and American naval lists, I worked on contacting other museums that own copies of the pair of prints. Ultimately this led me to the New York Historical Society and a reference librarian named Mariam, who was able to tell me that no Ser-res had ever, in her experience, been linked to the prints. Mariam sent me several written references to the prints. Captain Steele again made himself known. Mariam and I explored the naval lists and found several contenders, including the British Captain Elmes Yelverton Steele, a mere lieutenant at the time Attack was probably painted and the Ameri-can Captain George C. Steele, taken prisoner by the British at Fort George. Either man (or certain others sharing their surname) could have been either in action or in transit at Oswego. For now, the Attack has been re-attributed to an unknown painter, but this museum mystery remains an open file. Was our Captain Steele perhaps taught painting by Serres at the Royal Naval Academy? Per-haps we have it all wrong and the watercolour actually refers to an at-tack on Oswego during the Seven Years’ War in 1756, a time when Dominic Serres was known to be active in North America! Investigators here at RiverBrink continue to explore the story behind this watercolour drawing. If you believe you can shed some light on it, please email [email protected].

Kate Woltz

Collection Updates:

Thomson on Tour

RiverBrink on Facebook

RiverBrink has launched a new Face-book page. Over 500 people have be-come our Facebook friends, finding this a good way to keep current on what is happening at RiverBrink. It is easy to become our Facebook friend. When you are on your Face-book page, enter RiverBrink in the search function box at top, scroll down to the People Category, and click on RiverBrink Art-Museum. This will pull up the RiverBrink profile page. Click the “Add Friend” Button and a friend request will be sent to us. That’s all you have to do. We hope to see you on Facebook.


Special Exhibit ART & BLOOMS

A Huge Success On the weekend of October 21-23, Riv-erBrink Art Museum and the Garden Club of Niagara teamed up to present a three day special exhibition ART & BLOOMS, which featured se-lected pieces from RiverBrink’s art col-

lection accompanied by unique floral creations interpreted by floral designers from the regional garden club. With the help of Garden Club of Niagara representatives Diane Hockey (President), Lillie Haworth, and Barbara Bedell, River-Brink board member and Secretary Sandra Lawrence looked at works of art in the collection that had interesting composition, lines, and colours. Thir-teen pieces were chosen and thirteen teams of floral designers from the club set about creating floral displays in-spired by the artwork. Exhibition visitors were encouraged to "vote" for their favourite art / floral col-laborations by purchasing tickets that were deposited in "ballot boxes" next to each display, with a tally of votes on Sunday designating the Visitors' Choice Award. The Visitors’ Choice Award went to Lillie Haworth of Grimsby, whose floral design was inspired by the painting “Vue de Paris” ca. 1955, by Olivier Foss (French).

Sandra Lawrence presenting Lillie Haworth with a Year’s Membership to RiverBrink as winner of the Visitors. Choice Award

2012 Featured Exhibit

RiverBrink’s War of 1812 Curated by Debra Antoncic and Cameron Ward

This special exhibition to com-memorate the War of 1812 in-cludes art works, archival mate-rial and objects from the perma-nent collection at RiverBrink along with loans from a private collection. One of the highlights of the exhibition is the Portrait of Isaac Brock, attributed to Gerrit Schipper, on loan from the Guernsey Museum and Art Gallery in the U.K. RiverBrink’s

own Battle of Queenston Heights, attributed to Major Dennis and con-sidered an eye-witness account of the battle, will also be on display along with books, magazines, newspapers and objects that tell the story of both military and civilian life during the period.

2012 Lecture Series

May 27 “The True Face of Sir Isaac Brock”

by Guy St. Denis

June 24 “Joyce Wieland, Laura Secord Re-enactor?” by Dr. Kristy Holmes

July 29 Artist’s Talk

by Shelley Niro

Aug. 26 “Images of First Peoples in the RiverBrink Collection” by Dr. D. Antoncic

Sept. 30 “The War of 1812 in 19th c. Prints”

by Jim Burant

Oct. 28 “Those Left Behind: Women and Children in the War of 1812”

by Pauline Grondin

Sunday Afternoons

at RiverBrink

Artful Indulgences Gala Raises $7,000

for the RiverBrink Accessibility Fund

The RiverBrink Accessibility Fund has become a reality, thanks to all those who participated in Artful Indulgences, the first ever gala held at RiverBrink. On the evening of September 23rd, after mingling at a champagne reception, 68 fortunate individuals sat down to an exquisite four course dinner with wine pairings in the main gallery and dining room on the first floor of the museum. Hosted by international moti-vational speaker Ted Mouradian, the evening included a reverse draw for nine prizes includ-ing a painting by David Drum, a sculpture by

Uga Drava and the grand prize of a gourmet dinner for 8 catered by Niagara Gourmet at the winner’s home, to be attended by the Honour-able Rob and Mrs. Arlene Nicholson. The winning ticket of the Artful Indulgences Raffle prize of three cases of Rief Estates Wines was also drawn at the event. Ms. Andra Arnold of Puslinch, Ontario was the lucky winner of the evening’s grand prize of the gourmet dinner for 8 with the Honorable Rob and Mrs. Ar-lene Nicholson. Board President Linda Fritz of Queenston took home the Uga Drava bronze sculp-ture from the artist’s Esprit Series, which was one of the three prototypes for a seven foot copper sculp-ture on the theme of light and the soul. David Fowler of Niagara-on the-Lake became the proud owner of David Drum’s painting Niagara Peach Or-chard, while Glen Brazeau added a framed photo of a rock balancing installation by Ted Mouradian to his art collection. Other prizes were won by Jan Ellis, Joy Molon, Keith Dill, James Wakil, and Nancy Dumbrell. The winner of the Artful Indul-gences raffle was Lori Vigna. There are many people to thank for making the evening such a suc-cess. Carole Burlove tirelessly led the Gala committee consisting of John Arnold (Honourary Chair), Nancy Dumbrell, Fred Farnham and Martha Zinn. RiverBrink extends our sincerest thanks to them for their

dedication, hard work and atten-tion to detail. We also would like to thank our wine sponsors, Malivoire Wines, Pillitteri Es-tates Winery, and Peninsula Ridge Estates Winery for sup-plying the wine pairings. All reserved prize draws were do-nated by the artists, with Niag-ara Gourmet donating their ser-vices for the grand prize dinner. Other sponsor/donors for the

event included Meridian Credit Union (Virgil), Wine Country Roses, Jackson Triggs, Greaves Jams, The Mouradian Group Inc., Manfred Rudolph Law Offices, Linda and Ron Fritz, Jay & Carole Berlove, and Arthur & Martha Zinn. It is through their generosity of all involved that we were able to raise such a substantial sum for the Accessibility Fund.

RiverBrink on the 13th Annual NOTL Rotary ClubHoliday House Tour House

Just over four years ago Sandra Lawrence arranged to have RiverBrink included on the annual NOTL Ro-tary Holiday House Tour. Since that time, RiverBrink has become a popular attraction on the House Tour.

In that first year of participation, River-Brink hosted 356 people over the first weekend of December. This year we hosted a record-breaking 744 visitors. Over 40 volunteers donated their time to make this event suc-cessful. During the week of the House tour, a dedicated team of volunteers spent three days decorating River-Brink. The dining room was set for the dessert course of a Regency Christmas dinner. Volunteers acted as docents during the House Tour, answering questions from the many visitors.

This year’s visitors came from Toronto, Hamilton, the West-ern townships, New York and Pennsyl-vania, and from other parts of the Niagara region as well. To benefit the Ac-

cessibility Fund, a raffle for two gift bas-kets (the contents of which were gener-ously donated by RiverBrink members) was held during the House Tour. Caro-lyn MacKenzie and Sarah & Katie Ritner were the lucky winners. This raffle raised $291 for the Accessibility Fund.


Annual Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon Volunteer Recognition RiverBrink celebrates the work and

dedication of a specific volunteer in each of its seasonal newsletters.

RiverBrink Art Museum is proud to an-nounce Carole Berlove as our “Volunteer of the Season.” Carole has given us an inordinate amount of time and expertise, not only in 2011, but in previous years. Carole started her volunteering at River-Brink assisting the curator with decora-tive arts in the collection. Carole has, in recent years, extended her volunteering to decorating the Mu-seum for the Rotary Holiday House Tour. This year she chose a Regency Dessert table setting as the centre theme. Carole has given her expertise in supervising the dining room during the tour and ex-plaining the detailed artifacts in her set-ting. Carole took the lead in organizing River-Brink’s Artful Indulgences gala. Many months of preparation, assisted Nancy Dumbrell, Martha Zinn and Fred Farn-ham, resulted in 68 people attending and a profit of over $7,000. Thanks Carole, you’re invaluable!

Carole at “Artful

Indulgences: a Black and While Gala”


Volunteers are the backbone of any organization. And RiverBrink is no exception to that rule. Over 2,000 hours were contributed to RiverBrink by dedicated volunteers during 2011.

Each December, RiverBrink holds its annual Volunteer Ap-preciation Luncheon to thank all who have helped RiverBrink dur-ing the previous year. At that event, we recount the year’s ac-tivities and give official recogni-tion to our volunteers for their service and contribution to River-Brink

This year’s luncheon was held on Decem-ber 7th. Although not all could attend, a record-breaking 37 volunteers and board members, made time to join the staff in a celebratory meal. This year’s menu in-cluded our traditional baked ham, with quiches, artesian breads, mushroom stru-del and salads filling out the rest of the menu. For dessert, a festive Yule log (heavy with branches and snow) and bread pudding with custard were served. (Great thanks to Heather Thiffault for the catering.) Three volunteers were acknowledged with “over and above” awards for their extraordi-nary efforts in 2011: Bill Boyd for setting up and managing our gift shop, Sandra Lawrence for organizing Art & Blooms and for her work on the Board, and Carole Berlove for her diligence in organizing our first fund-raising gala Artful Indulgences. Carole was also recognized for her work in decorating RiverBrink for Christmas.

After lunch, Greta Hildebrand, administrator, took the floor to recount the many events and achievements that earmarked RiverBrink’s very successful year. She introduced Linda Fritz, President, who thanked the assembled “RiverBrink Family” for their hard work on behalf of the Board of Directors. Greta then introduced staff Brian Kremen in marketing, Debra

Antoncic, Interim Curator and 1812 guest curator, and (keep this under your hat … the official announcement has yet to be made) David Aurandt, RiverBrink’s new Director — Curator who will begin in early March of next year.

Just in time for your last-minute shop-ping: RiverBrink’s gift shop has a new selection of jewelry and designer knit-wear to add to its pottery, books and Christmas note cards. There are also watercolours, photographs and oil paint-ings for those seeking an original gift that will be well appreciated. We are open from 10 am until 4 pm during the week and until noon on De-cember 23. We reopen on January 3.

Our Gift Shop

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December 2011 Newsletter