Fonds P0067 - Orson Shorey Wheeler fonds

Orson Shorey Wheeler was born in 1902 in a farming family in Barnston in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. He died in October 1990. Orson Wheeler, R.C.A., S.S.C., was an artist and a well respected art teacher. He spent 55 years at Sir George Williams and its successor institution Concordia University.

His talent was discovered at a county fair and his development was encouraged by an American benefactor. He received a B.A. from Bishop's University in 1927. He studied at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the Monument national, both in Montreal, and at New York City's Cooper Union, Beaux Arts Institute, and National Academy of Design.

He began teaching at Sir George Williams in 1931. His professional career was multifaceted, but preeminent were his interests in sculpture and architecture. It is as a portrait sculptor that he will be remembered. All but one of the former rectors and principals of Sir George Williams sat for him. His major contribution to the field of architecture is a superlative collection of between two and three hundred architectural models in plasticine of many of the world's significant archictectural monuments. These were made as teaching aids for his classes in art and architectural history at Sir George Williams, Concordia, and McGill University. When viewed in series, they demonstrate the variances in how we perceive space. The unique collection makes possible more than 20,000 comparisons according to Wheeler's own calculations.

Wheeler's work was exhibited at the New York World's Fair, at the Tate Gallery in England, and in Canada at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the National Gallery in Ottawa, the Toronto Art Gallery, and the Winnipeg and Vancouver art galleries. At Concordia University his work is on public display in the library and the foyer of the Hall Building.