Partnerships develop over Lethbridge’s Buchanan Art Collection

Lethbridge Junior College receive works from the Buchanan Collection. February 9, 1963.
Photo courtesy the Galt Museum & Archives | Akaisamitohkanao'pa, 19752309400

Lethbridge—The Galt Museum & Archives | Akaisamitohkanao’pa (eternal gathering place), Lethbridge College, City of Lethbridge, and the University of Lethbridge have agreed to partner together to further the care, research, and exhibition of the Donald Buchanan art collection. The museum has agreed to take over the administration of the City’s Buchanan Bequest. The college has entrusted temporary custody of its collection to the Galt. The City of Lethbridge, through the Cultural Services division, has provided term funding for four University of Lethbridge summer internships from 2023 through 2026.

Photograph of Donald Buchanan. September 28, 1953.
Photo courtesy the Galt Museum & Archives | Akaisamitohkanao'pa, 19752910479

The donor, Donald Buchanan, was one of the children of prominent Lethbridge residents Senator William Buchanan and Alma Maud Buchanan. Their family was the owner and publisher of the Lethbridge Weekly Herald from 1909 until 1959. Donald Buchanan was born in Lethbridge in 1908 but left to study at the University of Toronto and University of Oxford. Between 1936 and 1960, Buchanan founded the National Film Society of Canada, worked as the Director of Talks and Public Affairs for the Canadian Radio Commission (now the CBC), established the Stills Division at the National Film Board of Canada, and served as Director of Industrial Design at the National Gallery of Canada and later as Associate Director.

Throughout his career working primarily in eastern Canada, Buchanan accumulated a significant personal art collection. He collected works by A. Y. Jackson, Paul Émile Borduas, Raoul Dufy, Goodridge Roberts, and many other artists from Canada and abroad. A few years after the deaths of their parents in the mid-1950s, Donald Buchanan and his brother Hugh Buchanan tried to get Lethbridge City Council to build a public art exhibition space in honour of their parents. While this project was never completed, Buchanan still donated his impressive collection of Canadian art to the City of Lethbridge and to Lethbridge College in his will when he died unexpectedly in 1966.

Since the 1960s, both the college and the City have occasionally displayed works from their respective portions of the Buchanan Collection. While both organizations value and care for their collections, neither are arts or culture institutions. As research into the Buchanan Collection has been conducted over the past decade, it has become clear that both organizations want to provide more public access and information about these collections.

In 2022, Lethbridge College’s Buchanan Library realized that upcoming renovation projects in their facility were going to require their portion of the Buchanan Collection to be relocated. Due to concerns about the safety and care of the collection while those renovations occur in 2023, college staff reached out to the Galt to find solutions.

“Both the college and the City approached the Galt Museum to discuss how we might facilitate the kind of research and care that this public collection deserves,” says Darrin J Martens, Aaká óóhkotoki (Many rocks), CEO/Executive Director of the Galt. “As a result of these conversations, we are all pleased to announce that our partnership will reunite both halves of the Buchanan Collection for the first time in many years, starting later in 2023.”

The City, through the Public Art Committee, has developed a trust of $147,000 that the museum may use to support the care and management of the City’s bequest. The college will fund costs associated with storage infrastructure, and they will grant access to their portion of the collection for research and exhibition purposes during this multi-year period.

"Being able to display paintings from the Group of Seven and many other celebrated Canadian artists has been a privilege for Lethbridge College’s Buchanan Library,” says Darel Bennedbaek, Library Coordinator. “We’re excited for the next phase, which will offer access to the full Buchanan Collection in a way that the college was not able to do alone. This partnership will allow us to enrich scholars, students, and the public in the way the Buchanans had always envisioned."

In addition to providing secure temporary storage for the college’s collection, the museum, the City, and the University of Lethbridge have agreed to fund and manage a paid summer-internship program called the Donald Buchanan Student Placement Program. This internship program will help train students in museum and collections procedures and will provide better public information and access to the collection.

“Now that the Galt Museum & Archives will be overseeing the care of the Buchanan art collection,” says Devon Smither, Associate Professor of Art History/Museum Studies, “the paid summer student work placements will benefit from the support of staff at the museum, offering students valuable experience and skill development in collections management, professional curatorial work, research, and art historical writing, as they build professional networks. One of our previous Buchanan interns is now the Assistant Curator at the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre and she credits the professional development from her work placement in helping her secure her current position.”

To learn more about the objects in the museum’s care, visit https://collections.galtmuseum.com.

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This media release can be found at www.galtmuseum.com/news.

Media Contacts

Darrin J Martens, Aaká óóhkotoki (Many rocks) (he/him)
CEO/Executive Director
darrin.martens@galtmuseum.com
403.329.7300