The former Fitzgerald Building has been renamed 55 Chancellor's Circle.
Taché Arts Complex wing named after L. L. FitzGerald
Former FitzGerald Building becomes 55 Chancellor’s Circle
The building formerly known as the FitzGerald Building will now become 55 Chancellor’s Circle. The building sits to the north of UMSU University Centre.
The FitzGerald name has been transferred over to the School of Art wing (the east wing) of the new Taché Arts Complex, which also houses the Desautels Faculty of Music.
The name honours L.L. FitzGerald, an early principal of the School of Art and an artist who exhibited with the Group of Seven.
According to the National Gallery of Canada’s website:
L.L. (Lionel LeMoine) FitzGerald was an accomplished draftsman, painter, printmaker and art educator. His subjects arose from his detailed observations of nature in Winnipeg and Manitoba, where he worked throughout his life.
FitzGerald took evening classes at A.S. Kesztheyli’s Art School in 1909, and from 1912 he found employment designing window displays, interior decorating, and painting theatre backdrops. From 1913 he exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and held his first solo exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1921. Feeling the need for more training, he travelled to New York to study at the Art Students League with the Canadian-born artist Boardman Robinson and with Kenneth Hayes Miller during the winter of 1921-22.
Returning to Winnipeg, he worked in commercial design and became assistant to G. Keith Gebhardt, Principal of the Winnipeg School of Art in 1924, before his own appointment as Principal (1929-49). Since teaching made considerable demands on his time, his art developed slowly and methodically. Drawing the Manitoba landscape was as important as painting, and he exhibited primarily in Winnipeg and Toronto.
Following an exhibition of his work in Toronto in 1928, FitzGerald was invited to exhibit with the Group of Seven. He became a member in 1932, just before the Group’s expansion into the Canadian Group of Painters, of which FitzGerald was a charter member.
The name changes come into effect in advance of Homecoming 2019, which takes place at the University of Manitoba from Sept. 16 to Sept. 22.