About the Collection
THE DONOVAN COLLECTION of contemporary Canadian art at the University of St. Michael’s College includes approximately 400 works by 200 artists, almost all of whom are Canadian. The works are in a wide range of media and styles and represent a cross-section of the art exhibited in Toronto from the early 1980s to the present time. For more information about the collection, please contact Jessica Barr, University Archivist.
View the Collection
The Installation
THE COLLECTION is installed not in a separate gallery but throughout the College, in office and class room buildings, as well as in the Kelly library and student residences. It is a collection which students, faculty and staff are able to live and interact with in the course of their daily activities.
Many of the works in Odette Hall have a markedly spiritual quality. Some evoke specific religious themes although always in a contemporary way. In the south west and east stairwells and along the fourth floor of Carr Hall are some fifty photo-based works. On the three floors of the Kelly Library and in its central stairwell there are more than a hundred works of a broadly eclectic nature. Many speak in a special way to students.
The Donovan Collection,
University of St Michael’s College
About the Collector
THE DONOVAN COLLECTION is the result of the generosity and commitment of a single individual, Fr. Dan Donovan, a long-time professor at USMC.
Fr. Donovan, a priest of the Archdiocese of Toronto and a graduate of St. Michael’s College, completed degrees in theology and Scripture at Laval University in Quebec City and the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome as well as a doctorate in theology at the University of Münster in Germany. He began teaching theology at USMC in 1971.
Exposure to some of the great art of Europe during his post-graduate studies sparked his initial interest in the visual arts. The first two works in the collection, woodcuts by the German Jewish artist Jacob Steinhardt, were purchased in Münster in 1967 and were thought of by Donovan at the time as souvenirs of his years in Europe.
In the fall of 1980 he donated to the College a large stainless steel sculpture by Kosso Eloul, entitled Zen West. Its installation in the small park at the corner of Bay and St Joseph Streets marked the beginning of Donovan’s serious commitment to Canadian art.
The focus of the collection was initially on work with a religious or more broadly spiritual content. By the mid-1990s it had grown to the point that some 50 works from it were exhibited in the Art Gallery of Hamilton. The opening of the renovated Odette Hall in 1996 led to the donation of the collection as it then existed to St Michael’s and to its installation on the two bottom floors of that building.
The collection expanded considerably during the early years of the present century with works now installed throughout the USMC campus.