MacMillan, Duncan (1931 - 2006)
Role: graduate, trustee, benefactorDates: class of 1953
Portrait Location: MacMillan Hall 100
Artist: Kinstler, Everett Raymond (b. 1927)
Portrait Date: 1998
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 40
Framed Dimensions: 50 1/4
Brown Portrait Number: 274
Brown Historical Property Number: 2222
Duncan MacMillan was a graduate of Brown, a trustee of the Brown Corporation, and a benefactor of the university. In honor of his support of and his generosity to his alma mater, Brown's new Geology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences building was named MacMillan Hall in 1998.
MacMillan was a native of Minnesota, where he grew up with a love for ice hockey. He arrived at Brown in 1949 intending to study engineering, but found that required afternoon labs interfered with hockey practice. He chose instead to major in Classics, which he not only enjoyed but which, as he later recounted, left his afternoons free for sports.
After graduation in 1953 Duncan MacMillan returned to the Midwest to work with MacMillan-Cargill, his family's company in Minnetonka, Minnesota. His affection for Brown was lifelong, however, and after serving as a University Trustee he was named Trustee Emeritus. MacMillan was both an uncle and grandfather of Brown University students.
Duncan MacMillan's portrait was painted in 1998 by the New York portrait artist Everett Raymond Kinstler, whose name is signed prominently on the canvas at lower left. Kinstler also painted Brown President Howard Swearer, whose portrait (BP 250) hangs in Sayles Hall. As he was working on the picture, the artist painted MacMillan in a pin striped suit. When MacMillan visited the artist's studio to preview the work he noticed the pin stripes, and mentioned to Kinstler that he always wore gray flannel suits. The next week, when the painting was unveiled in Providence at the ribbon cutting for MacMillan Hall, the artist had made the pin stripes disappear. In the finished portrait Duncan MacMillan is pictured in a solid gray flannel suit.