Art show celebrates influential dealer Max Stern

By Barbara Black

A lively jazz band, red and gold balloons and Garnet Key blazers marked the short journey from Concordia&rsquo:s Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on Aug. 31, as a total of about 700 art-lovers attended joint vernissages.

Concurrent shows at the two institutions pay tribute to the work of the late patron of the arts Max Stern, who had a profound effect on modern art in this country.

The show at the Ellen Art Gallery is called Max Stern: The Taste of a Dealer, and was curated by Michel Moreault, who served as Stern’s assistant at the Dominion Gallery for over 20 years.

These works are by well-known artists - Paul-Émile Borduas, Emily Carr, E.J. Hughes, John Lyman, Jean-Paul Riopelle among them - but were acquired from private collections and are thus rarely seen by the public. Former director Karen Antaki expressed the delight of many visitors: “This space is filled with icons of Canadian art!”

François-Marc Gagnon, director of Concordia’s Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, will give a talk and tour, titled “Max Stern: The Taste of a Dealer,” on Sept. 14. The show continues to Oct. 9.

Stern was born in Germany in 1904, where his father owned a gallery. He studied art history, and obtained a doctorate from the University of Bonn in 1928. Due to the Nazi regime, he moved to England in 1937 and immigrated to Canada in 1941.

In Montreal, Stern was the manager of the Dominion Gallery of Fine Arts for two years before he took ownership of it in 1947 with his Swedish-born wife Iris Westerberg.

The Sterns were receptive to the work of Canadian artists, and through their purchases and advice to collectors contributed to educating the tastes of a timid Canadian public. They were also fine and generous collectors in their own right, donating to over 20 public institutions in North America and Israel.

Stern died in 1987, leaving a substantial bequest to be shared by Concordia, McGill and the Hebrew University, in Israel. Earlier this year, the Ellen Gallery appointed the first Max Stern Curator of Art, and established the Iris Westerberg Stern Fund.

The show at the MMFA includes some 50 works by Canadian artists that were donated by Stern to the MMFA, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MACM) and Concordia, and the exhibit, called A Dealer for “Living Art,” will travel to Windsor, the McMichael Gallery, near Toronto, and the Beaverbook, in New Brunswick.

The opening last week coincided with the unveiling of a majestic Rodin sculpture outside the north pavilion of the MMFA and the inauguration of a sculpture garden dedicated to Max and Iris Stern. In addition, the MACM has renamed its symposia in the Sterns’ honour, and there will be an academic conference at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery on Sept. 29 on the contributions of Max Stern to Canadian art.

Jacques de Tonnancour Reclining Nude, 1945. Oil on canvas. Private collection