A lifelong and passionate art lover, Tom Butterfield is the driving force behind the creation of the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art, the Island’s leading gallery of Bermuda-inspired art.
Butterfield formed the Masterworks Foundation in 1987 with friend and curator Elise Outerbridge with the goal of repatriating works of art created in Bermuda by prominent artists.
The idea behind Masterworks came from Butterfield’s interest in Banyan Tree Trunk, one of 14 charcoal and pencil drawings created by American artist Georgia O’Keeffe during her stay in Bermuda in 1933-34. Butterfield had an opportunity to buy the drawing for $60,000 or 12 other Bermuda-related paintings for the same price. His mother advised him to buy the 12 as a broader basis for what would become the Masterworks Collection.
The 12 paintings—dubbed the ‘12 Apostles’ by Butterfield—included a pencil drawing by George Ault of a park in St George’s, a watercolour by Ogden Pleissner of Shinbone Alley, St George’s and a Ross Turner watercolour of Fairylands.
The Masterworks Collection has since grown to include more than 1,200 works by world-renowned artists such as Winslow Homer, Henry Moore, Marsden Hartley, Albert Gleizes, E. Ambrose Webster and Georgia O’Keeffe, whose Banyan Tree Trunk was eventually obtained in 1989.
Celebrating the Gallery’s 25th anniversary in 2012, Butterfield told the Bermuda Sun: “The fact that so many people were inspired by the island meant there was a lot for Bermudians and visitors to learn about our culture through our arts. Our collection is a cultural awakening of what Bermuda has to offer.”
For its first 21 years, Masterworks was a nomadic collection, opening initially at City Hall and then moving from one temporary location to another, including several on Front Street, Hamilton, relying on the support of individuals and various corporations as well as Butterfield’s own indefatigable fund-raising efforts. He personally raised more than $2.5 million by running six marathons, including London and New York, and cycling from one end of Britain to the other, from London to Belgium and from St. Remy, France to Lyme Regis in the U.K.
He also arranged for touring Masterworks exhibitions overseas to help raise funds. The first was held at the Woodmere Museum in Pennsylvania in 2000 and was followed by successful shows in New York, London and Lyme Regis, home of Sir George Somers, to mark the 400th anniversary of Bermuda’s settlement in 1609.
In March 2008, Butterfield’s dream of a permanent home for the collection became a reality when the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art, the Island’s first-ever purpose built museum, opened in the Botanical Gardens. All the paintings are now housed in one climate-controlled environment with storage facilities, a members’ lounge, café and gift shop.
It features the Butterfield Family Gallery displaying the permanent collection, a classroom and the Rick Faries Gallery, named after Masterworks’ late Chairman, which showcases local artists, community projects and special exhibitions. With the move, Masterworks was able to host Bermuda’s richest art competition, The Charman Prize—an annual $10,000 award made by resident English art-lover and businessman John Charman.
The museum has become a cultural and historical destination for locals and visitors. Prince of Wales is among the distinguished patrons while the Duchess of Gloucester is among the dignitaries to have opened exhibitions there.
Masterworks’ 25th anniversary exhibitions featured stamps from The Queen’s Royal Philatelic Collection including rare Bermuda Perot stamps and an exhibition of original lithographs by former Beatle John Lennon to coincide with the unveiling of a sculpture by Bermudian artist Graham Foster commemorating Lennon’s last album, Double Fantasy. The album was partly written in Bermuda and named after a flower he saw in the Botanical Gardens.
Since 1997, Masterworks has also run an Artist in Residence programme that continues the tradition of attracting international artists to be inspired by Bermuda and in turn to inspire local artists.
Butterfield made it part of Masterworks’ mission to nurture local artists, originally staging a series of ‘Artists Up Front…. Street’ exhibitions when the Gallery was housed in Hamilton and continuing the programme as ‘Artists in the Garden’ when Masterworks moved to Botanical Gardens.
Butterfield is one of five children born to Dudley and Deborah Butterfield—his siblings are George, the Canadian entrepreneur and co-founder of Butterfield and Robinson, Peggy Couper, a well-known road runner, James, a businessman, a triathlon champion and Olympic rower and Deborah, who is deceased. He married former Bermuda tennis No.1 Gill Reiss in 1982.
Educated at Bermuda High School and Warwick Academy, he later attended St. Andrew’s College in Aurora, Ontario before earning a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree from Ryerson University in Toronto in 1975.
He developed a passion for photography and printmaking at Ryerson, where he helped develop a photographic programme for children with disabilities. He said the positive impact of the programme on the children was a life-changing experience. “It’s little things like that that motivate you to do other things in life, ” he said.
After graduation the Canadian Council for the Arts awarded him a grant, even though he did not become a Canadian citizen until 1976. He spent the next four years exhibiting his work across eastern Canada and freelanced as a printer for the Ontario government’s environmental service department, supporting his art by working as a janitor at City Hall in Toronto.
When he returned to Bermuda in 1980, he worked for the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs, organizing their annual Heritage Month exhibitions, which in turned sparked his interest in Bermuda-related artworks.
He has also co-authored several books on Bermuda art, including 150th Anniversary of Photography: Celebrating the First One Hundred Years of Photography in Bermuda, 1839-1939 (with Kevin Stevenson and Susanne Notman, 1989) and The Masterworks Bermudiana Collection (with Patricia Calnan and Elise Outerbridge, 1994). He curated the images from original transparencies for Emeralds on a Silver Zone—Early Colour Photography In Bermuda 1939-1960 by James Ziral (1992).
Other significant Masterworks publications have included exhibition catalogues Bermuda: Two Centuries of Inspiration and Painters in Paradise, both produced with Elise Outerbridge, and he curated selections from the Masterworks Collection for In a Perfect World: Bermuda in the Context of American Landscape Painting by Judith Bookbinder, published by the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College in 2002.
Butterfield was awarded the MBE in The Queen’s 2012 New Year’s Honours List for his dedication to repatriating Bermudian art and for helping to nurture Bermudian artists. His services to the arts were recognized with a Queen’s Badge and Certificate in 1987 and he was awarded the Bermuda Arts Council’s Patron Award in 2008.
