The Agnes Etherington Art Centre is preparing to welcome 44 paintings bequeathed by the late Dr. Isabel Bader, LLD’09, which will complete The Bader Collection at Agnes. This estate gift represents the essence of who Isabel and the late Dr. Alfred Bader, BSc’45, BA’46, MSc’47, LLD’86, were as collectors, and what they imagined their collection could mean once housed at a public university gallery.
It is also the culmination of a journey that began on Nov. 15, 1941, with Alfred’s arrival on campus.
A refugee who lost family during the Holocaust, Alfred was released from an internment camp in Quebec with the assistance of sponsor and friend, Martin Wolff, before being accepted at Queen’s. When Wolff died in 1948, Alfred made his first philanthropic gift to the university, a scholarship in honour of his friend.
Alfred first met Isabel in 1951 during a week-long Atlantic voyage and would reconnect with her in 1975 before the couple married in 1982. They shared a life-long love of art, philanthropically supporting numerous artistic endeavours at the university, including the Agnes Etherington Art Centre.
The relationship between the Baders and Agnes has grown over many years, since the first painting Alfred donated to the centre in 1967. Today, The Bader Collection is Canada’s most comprehensive collection of authenticated paintings by Rembrandt and his circle.
“Queen’s is grateful to the Baders for their unparalleled vision and generosity,” says Michelle Fuko, Chief Advancement Officer. “The Bader Collection represents a world-class collection of early modern European paintings. It will find a home in the new facilities of Agnes Reimagined, a revitalization made possible through the philanthropic support of the Baders.”
Agnes Reimagined is a transformative project that will see the Agnes Etherington Art Centre become the largest public university-affiliated museum in Canada and a champion of decolonial museology globally. Construction began earlier this spring, with the new space scheduled to open in 2026. The project was made possible thanks to a US$75 million gift from Bader Philanthropies, Inc.
The most recent additions to The Bader Collection represent a unique and exciting opportunity to realize the ambitions of the Agnes Reimagined project: a living museum for the 21st century, where Indigenous and western world views live side-by-side as equals connecting past, present, and future.
“These artworks will generate new curatorial projects involving The Bader Collection as part of an intersectional dialogue across disciplines and communities envisioned by Agnes Reimagined,” explains Director and Curator Emelie Chhangur. “This significant group of new acquisitions provide compelling possibilities to engage The Bader Collection within expanded and entangled histories that connect the time and place in which these artworks were conceived and created and our own time and context here in Canada.“
The works augment significant thematic concerns already present in The Bader Collection, which are grounded in Alfred’s experiences as a refugee and that shaped his priorities as a philanthropist. New additions such as Jacob's Dream (c. 1600-1605) by Abraham Bloemaert, which depicts the first recorded dream in the Bible by a protagonist who had to flee home, resonated on a personal level, as Alfred remarked during his life.
Taken as a whole, the works that comprise The Bader Collection have a distinct focus on human experience and connection, including the moral responsibility to care for each other.
"Many of the themes represented in these new acquisitions are so integral to our own vision for Agnes Reimagined. We are thrilled to welcome them into our new home,” remarks Bader Curator of European Art Suzanne van de Meerendonk.
The additions also deepen the understanding of artistic production and cultural life in the 17th-century Dutch Republic. Created at the height of Dutch expansionism, paintings such as two still lifes by Willem Kalf (1619-1693) demonstrate the high skill achieved in illusionistic oil painting, while also representing the societal obsession with colonial access and material wealth that was based on extractive and often violent trade.
As Agnes prepares for its reopening in 2026, curators are engaged in broader collaborative projects that reflect on the significance and responsibilities of housing a large collection of Dutch artworks on the traditional lands of the Anishinabek, Haudenosaunee, and Huron-Wendat within the context of Dutch colonialism in North America and beyond. Related public programs will continue to be announced on Agnes’s website.
Agnes Reimagined will fundamentally change the way art history and art conservation are studied at Queen's University, enabling students to work directly with some of the most advanced equipment and important collections in North America. Now complete, The Bader Collection remains a key pedagogical resource for students across academic disciplines.
