This is the 3rd in a series of timelines looking at Rochester art and the Memorial Art Gallery in celebration of the Galley's centennial in October 2013.
Rush Rhees died in January 1939.
In early 1939, the Department of Art & Archaeology and the Memorial Art Gallery presented a Program of Integration to the University.
Gertrude Herdle Moore chaired a committee to select sculpture for the Spanish-American War Memorial in Rochester.
As during the First World War, the Gallery prepared to be of service to the Rochester community during the war years.
James Dexter Havens was honored with the Lillian Fairchild award in 1939 for his wood block prints.
The Gallery exhibited George Eastman's 18th-century paintings in December 1939.
Beginning in Fall term, 1940, the Gallery offered a course in Museum Methods to University of Rochester students majoring in Fine Arts.
In 1940 John C. Menihan won the Lillian Fairchild award for painting, watercolors & lithographs.
In 1940, the Gallery's volunteer fundraising organization was organized.
Rochester Riches was the title of a January 1943 article in Art Digest, discussing purchases made by the Memorial Art Gallery with funds donated by R.T. Miller, Jr.
In January 1941 an exhibition of 14 paintings by Vincent Van Gogh were exhibited at the Memorial Art Gallery.
With the Rochester Historical Society, the Gallery mounted the first exhibition of Folk Art of Rochester & the Genesee Valley.
In 1941, the Gallery began a tradition of awarding Juror's awards associated with the Rochester-Finger Lakes exhibitions.
In 1941 the Gallery began an initiative to allow Gallery members to rent artwork with a view toward later purchase.
The Gallery acquired this portrait of William H. Macdowell by his son-in-law Thomas Eakins, in 1941.
The Gallery joined other art museums nationwide in developing plans for air-raid preparedness.
By late December 1941, there was a call for volunteer air raid wardens.
Fritz Trautmann was an artist, a landscape architect, a color theorist and a teacher in the Creative Workshop, the Gallery’s studio school.
Carl W. Peters' final mural commission under the WPA's Fine Arts Project was for Charlotte High School.
Bragdon’s "Mathematical Abstractions" is a set of images based on mathematical relationships and suggestive of cosmic forms in the solar system.
In April - May 1942, the Women's Council arranged for the Thorne Miniature Rooms to be shown at MAG.
In 1942, the Women's Council sponsored several new programs, including a Printmaker's Club for children twelve to sixteen years old.
The Gallery's kiln was used four days a week beginning in the summer of 1942 by the University's Institute of Optics, in a research project for the War Department.
In 1942, Rochester artist William Ehrich won the Lillian Fairchild award for sculpture.
Gas and rubber rationing impacted attendance at many museums during the war.
In 1943, the Brooklyn Museum organized an exhibition of works by The Eight, duplicating in part the 1908 exhibition at Macbeth Gallery.
In 1944, the Gallery trained volunteers to provide art activities as a form of occupational therapy in local hospitals.
Twenty-five years after the Homelands Exhibition organized by George Herdle, the Gallery and the YWCA organized a series of exhibitions celebrating the diverse art of Rochester's ethnic communities.
On February 8, 1945, Gallery founder Emily Sibley Watson passed away in her Prince Street home.
“I never thought a dead fish would cause so much trouble,” said long-time MAG curator Isabel C. Herdle.
Paintings by e.e. cummings were shown at MAG in June 1945.
In response to the "Fish" controversy, the Gallery contacted museums, collectors & dealers, and opened a teaching exhibition on the A.B.C.'s of Modern Art in October 1945.
In 1945, Hilda Altschule (Mrs. William H. Coates) won the Lillian Fairchild award for painting.
In 1944, Aileen Osborne Webb founded the School for American Craftsmen, initially at Dartmouth College.
In October 1945, the Nierendorf Gallery in New York opened an exhibition featuring "Forbidden Art of the Third Reich, paintings by German artists whose work was banned from museums and forbidden to exhibit."
The Weavers' Guild of Rochester was formed in Spring of 1946.
In 1946 the Gallery began several social outreach projects to bring art into the community.
On May 14, 1947, Gertrude Herdle Moore was elected as a Fellow of the Rochester Museum (now Rochester Museum & Science Center) for contributions to community culture.
In April 1948, the Print Club of Rochester commemorated the 150th anniversary of lithography with a major exhibition at the Memorial Art Gallery.
Paintings from the George Eastman Collection moved temporarily to the Gallery in 1948 during the renovation of George Eastman House.
Thomas S. Tibbs, a Rochester alumnus, joined the Gallery staff in 1948.
In 1948, a young German woman came to Gertrude Herdle Moore's office, with a roll of prints under one arm and a book in her hand.
In 1948, Jocelyn Macy Sloan won the Lillian Fairchild Award for her sculptural work in alabaster, stone, and terracotta.
Works from the collection of dealer Joseph Brunner were auctioned in Spring of 1949.
Although the Gallery held art classes from its inception, the art school for all ages was not known as the Creative Workshop until around 1949.
This organization of advertising artists was created in June 1950. For many years it exhibited at the Memorial Art Gallery.
The School for American Craftsmen moved from Alfred University to RIT in 1949; formal instruction began in the Fall of 1950.
Lola Konraty won the 1950 Lillian Fairchild award for sculpture.
In 1951 the Gallery acquired 14 works from the Encyclopedia Britannica Collection, a collection of contemporary American painting begun by the company in 1943.
The Arena Group began in 1951.
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