Exhibitions
Mack Jost Gift exhibition

Horsham Regional Art Gallery is pleased to exhibit the Mack Jost Gift, a selection of works drawn from over 250 works donated to the Horsham Regional Art Gallery collection by Australian concert pianist Mack Jost (pronounced Yost) AM (1918-2000). Jost’s legacy tells a nationally significant story of private benefaction supporting regional Australia and is an important element in the story of art and culture in the Wimmera. His generosity served our region and propelled forward the development of the art gallery. It launched the Horsham Regional Art Gallery collection and helped to foster further benefaction, community support and engagement with the Gallery and its collection ever since.
Horsham Regional Art Gallery was established in 1967 as a single room gallery within Horsham Library on McLachlan St (the site of the former Temperance Hall). The Horsham Regional Art Gallery collection was then established in 1972. Eight years later, Horsham-born Mack Jost approached Council and Gallery staff with the proposal of a significant series of gifts to the collection, Jost offered to gift his private collection of Australian paintings and works on paper to the Horsham collection, as a series of donations during his lifetime and culminating in a significant bequest. He selected Horsham to commemorate his family’s long association with the Wimmera, having been born in Horsham in 1918, and his father Conrad Henry Jost was a farmer on land outside of Horsham for several decades. From then, Jost progressively donated his personal art collection of over 250 works by significant Australian artists from the colonial and modern eras, which culminated in the final bequest after his death in 2000.
This display significant works by artists including Rupert Bunny, Judy Cassab, John Coburn, Robert Dickerson, William Dobell, Elioth Gruner, George Lambert, John Longstaff, Max Meldrum, Frederick McCubbin, John Olsen, William Piguenit, and Michael Shannon. Multiple selections of works on paper which will be refreshed throughout the exhibition.
Image: John GLOVER The cathedral n.d watercolour on paper 53 x 47cm Horsham Regional Art Gallery collection Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by Mack Jost, 1988