A Cultivating Journey: The Herman Levy Legacy

Representing one of the most important donations ever made to a university gallery in Canada, A Cultivating Journey presents five centuries of magnificent art from the McMaster Museum of Art’s Levy Collection and Bequest from Herman Herzog Levy.

This exhibition reflects the remarkable acumen of Levy as a collector and explores new scholarship and perspectives on the objects and the collector himself, demonstrating the continuing impact of one man’s passion for art. Works by well-known artists such as Gustave Courbet, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh reflect Levy’s personal taste and interests, which favoured Impressionist and Post-Impressionist landscapes, portraits and still lifes. He followed his donation of artworks with a substantial financial bequest specifically for art purchases, through which 219 acquisitions were made. The Levy Bequest made it possible to expand different aspects of the museum’s collection and add historical, modern and contemporary works, including those by a range of French, British, Japanese, German and Netherlandish artists.