About MAM
Mission Statement
The Montclair Art Museum (MAM), along with its Yard School of Art, engages a diverse community through its distinctive collection of American and Native American art, exhibitions, and educational programs that link art to contemporary life in a global context.
Vision and Values Statement
As the Montclair Art Museum approaches its Centennial in 2014, we seek to elevate our profile as a nationally recognized leader of mid-sized, regional art museums. Valuing diversity, innovation, and the importance of art to society, we will invigorate our curatorial presentations, expand our educational mission, promote greater connections to our community, engage in fruitful partnerships that reach deep into our region and beyond, embrace new media and technologies, pursue responsible facilities management and environmental impact, and secure our financial stability.
Diversity Statement
The Montclair Art Museum is committed to being an inclusive and diverse organization, one that respects and welcomes individual differences in order to offer the most meaningful art experience to the widest possible audience. We strive to cultivate an environment that fosters productivity, creativity, and individual satisfaction by celebrating such differences as race, gender, nationality, age, religion, sexual orientation, and physical abilities.
Our Logo
Our logo is inspired by the bow in Hermon Atkins MacNeil’s The Sun Vow. This sculpture stands on the lawn directly in front of the Museum’s South Mountain Avenue entrance. Our stylized version of MacNeil’s bow reflects the mission of the Museum. Like the arrow in its trajectory forward, we are dedicated to collecting and exhibiting art from all segments of American culture, from the past into the future.
The Sun Vow depicts a Native American rite of passage that MacNeil learned of during his travels. In the Sioux tribe, for a boy to become a man and accepted as a warrior, he must shoot an arrow directly into the sun. If the chieftain is blinded by the sun’s rays and cannot follow the arrow’s path, the boy passes the test.
MacNeil created The Sun Vow to fulfill a requirement for his four-year Rinehart Scholarship at the American Academy in Rome. As an American sculptor, MacNeil (1866–1947) was best known for his Native American works including The Moqui Runner and A Primitive Chant. He also designed the Standing Liberty Quarter (which he initialed “M” to the right of the date) and the Medal of Award for the 1915 Pan American Exposition in San Francisco.
Hermon Atkins MacNeil (1866-1947), The Sun Vow, 1899 (cast 1902), Bronze, 68 x 45 x 29 in., Gift of William T. Evans, 1913.2
