VANCOUVER.- On Saturday, June 18, the Audain Art Museum launched the public opening of Masterworks from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. This exhibition which runs for 12 weeks features works by important international and Canadian artists collected by Lord Beaverbrook (media magnate and Winston Churchill confidant) and now residing in Fredericton’s Beaverbrook Art Gallery.

Originally known as Max Aitken, Britain’s most formidable press baron, Lord Beaverbrook was appointed by Churchill to build the aircraft which won the Battle of Britain in World War II, and subsequently run the United Kingdom’s entire wartime economy. Until Lord Beaverbrook built an art gallery late in his life in his native New Brunswick, to which he donated his magnificent art collection, most people had forgotten that this man of small stature, yet towering personality, was by birth a Canadian.

The 75 paintings in the Beaverbrook exhibition features world-renowned artists, such as Delacroix, Gainsborough, Constable, Reynolds, Sargent, Sisley, Turner and Freud; and prominent historical Canadian artists including Krieghoff, Morrice, Carr, Milne, Gagnon, as well as members of the Group of Seven. The highlight of the exhibition is Salvador Dali’s monumental painting Santiago El Grande which stands 13 feet tall.

The Whistler museum’s contemporary building designed by Patkau Architects, embedded in a grove of spruce trees, is Canada’s newest Category A museum. Three months ago, it opened to enthusiastic reviews of its design and permanent art collection which spans 200 years of art making in British Columbia.