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Sunday at the Beaverbrook

Rachel Smith ,

Housed in New Brunswick’s capital city is an art collection that puts others to shame. Starting out with just over 300 paintings, Beaverbrook Art Gallery has expanded over the years to include a few thousand pieces of art. 

Greeting you at its base is a self portrait by Vincent Van Gogh. This sculpture is an example of  the surrealism that Van Gogh is so famous for. Other stand out gems that attract tourists are the Salvador Dali exhibit and various paintings by Henri Matisse and Andy Walhol.

“I particularly liked the Salvador Dali collection since I studied him in Art History in high school,” says Grace Schnyder, a visitor from Maine. 

It’s not just foreign art that hangs in this gallery. September through February will hold Newfoundland native Ned Pratt’s One Wave. This moving exhibit features photography that captures the harsh angles and natural beauty of where he grew up. Details of stark landscapes are the foundation of his art that sets him apart from tradition.

Canadian dancer Lucy May performs in front of modern art.

Art at the Beaverbrook doesn’t always stay on the wall. A performance by local dancer Lucy May is inspired by her time as a child in the gallery. She jump ropes, talks, screams, and moves as the audience is forced to follow. The contrast of the clean-cut gallery to her explosive dancing invokes powerful emotions.

 

The vast selection means that everyone can find something they like. Asking visitors for their  favorite painting brought out hidden preferences. “The reason this is my favorite is that it is a dark painting, where everything else in the room is so bright,” says the security guard on duty. With so much selection there is truly something for everyone.

 

A close up of “From the Family Album”, a painting by Canadian Herzi Kashetsky in 1950.

 

This sentiment was not lost on the founder of the gallery, William Maxwell “Max” Aitken. In his own words, “the labour of age may prove more lasting than the strident achievements of youth”. He built something lasting through infancy that will only grow in the future. For now it is a mecca for fine arts in Fredericton, where anyone is lucky to spend a Sunday.