W. McAllister Johnson Collection

 

The W. McAllister Johnson library is a collection of over 1,700 titles, donated to Carleton University by W. McAllister Johnson, a retired professor of art history at the University of Toronto.

 

A particular emphasis has been placed on the institutions that significantly shaped the discipline of art history, for example, the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and its Salons, and the Louvre, the first truly public art museum. This collection is particularly strong in early catalogues of private and public collections. This collection is valuable for the information it contains about the works of individual artists and the trends they reveal in public taste, as well as for their illustrations, which were the main source of visual information about works of art for the contemporary public. The collection encompasses the various aspects and activities of the art world in France and other European countries in the period spanning the Renaissance to the 20th century.

 

Hear W. McAllister Johnson talk about the collection

 

Learn more about the ARC collection

 

View a list of files in the fonds

 

There is also a significant collection of prints donated by W. McAllister Johnson to the Carleton University Art Gallery. This ongoing donation has consisted of more than 400 eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French prints. The collection emphasizes individual prints, both originals and reproductions of paintings, that represent a broad range of subjects, from portraits of notables to genre scenes and landcapes, and have been chosen less for their iconic value than for what they reveal of their time and of the role of prints in society.

 

Learn more about the CUAG collection