The Ellen Gallery’s collection is almost 50 years old. Before examining the diverse practices that have marked the act of collecting, we must first place the creation of this collection in its proper context and look back at a number of sociocultural factors that were undoubtedly involved in its founding.

In Quebec, the provincial government’s creation of the Ministère des Affaires culturelles (1961)¹ coincided with a re-evaluation of education. A Royal Commission of Inquiry on Education in the Province of Quebec, otherwise known as the Parent Commission, was set up in 1961 and the various chapters of what came to be known as the Parent Report were submitted over the next few years. In addition, a Commission royale d’enquête sur l’enseignement des arts dans la province de Québec, the Rioux Commission, was mandated in 1966 to provide a more accurate picture of the arts specifically in the context in which they were taught. Submitted in 1969, the Rioux Report was one of the first documents to define art as a “… means of knowledge having a critical function in society.”² Consistent with this way of thinking, the democratization of the teaching of art lay at the core of its 368 recommendations. This second commission of inquiry brought the arts into the sphere of university subject areas and, as a result, transformed the realm of art by creating institutions where it could be taught and made accessible to all.

Founded in 1926, Sir George Williams College offered courses tailored to the job market. In the late 1920s, a small affiliated art school began offering courses in painting, drawing, sculpture, commercial art and fashion design. Although the College obtained university accreditation it needed to call itself a university in 1948, its art school became the Fine Arts Department of Sir George Williams University only in 1965. The Department subsequently underwent rapid expansion and its teaching staff increased considerably. The University’s collecting plan took shape in this context of social transformation in which art was assigned a new official importance. In building its collection, the University took part in the establishment of democratic structures inaugurated by government bodies and other social agents to foster the creation, conservation and dissemination of art.

By starting its collection as early as 1962, the University acted in a progressive manner. The Quebec government founded the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MACM) in 1964, which was, at that time, merely a service of the Ministère des Affaires culturelles. The MACM began collecting art that same year, starting with a set of works donated by Otto Bengle, owner of Galerie Soixante, and a group of artists in his entourage.³ Inaugurated in 1933, the “Musée de la province” in Quebec City initially housed the Quebec Archives, consisting of a collection of objects related to natural history and one representing the fine arts. In 1963, a year after its natural history collection was moved elsewhere, it was finally renamed the “Musée du Québec.” This name change signalled a new mandate oriented henceforth toward the fine arts. These changes in the museum’s history have largely helped to make the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec what it is today. Likewise, 1963 was also the year in which the Ministère des Affaires culturelles created the first art grants program.

When the University started collecting art, it had neither a permanent exhibition space on its premises nor sufficient storage space for the works it acquired. Works were on permanent display in the University’s public spaces and were moved periodically to ensure greater visibility. Alfred Pinsky, Director of the Department of Fine Arts, was responsible for them until the opening, in 1966, of the University’s first gallery in the Hall Building. Pinksy, like his successors,⁴ performed this task while making art, teaching and managing the Fine Arts Department.

The University’s collecting plan, proposed and developed by someone external to the institution, was improvised in some respects. Samuel Schecter was a Montreal businessman and the owner of the Penthouse Gallery, whose mandate was to develop collections on behalf of universities. The idea to create a collection came from Schecter and was made viable by Douglas Burns Clarke, Vice-Rector of the University and a drama professor. Together they formed a committee with the goal of developing the project. The first works in the collection were brought together a few months later. It is impossible to determine, however, the role actually played by this committee in the subsequent development of the collection. Schecter, was very active in solliciting donations from individuals and business corporations, facilitating University-donor contacts and carrying out various administrative tasks associated with acquisitions.

We know very little about the acquisition and management practices of those who initiated the collection due to a lack of documentation. The works themselves and a few archival documents do allow us to glimpse some important facts, but the information to be gleaned from these is often incomplete.

A document⁵ somewhat akin to an acquisition policy does outline the University’s collecting plan from the very beginning. This plan is presented as affording an opportunity to bring together high quality Canadian paintings, sculptures and art objects, both figurative and abstract, in order to represent the range of art produced in Canada. According to this document, the “Sir George Williams University Canadian art collection” was to be made up of donations involving no conditions whatsoever with regard to their use or exhibition.

Collecting: The inflections of a Practice. Installation View. Photo: Paul Smith.

From its inception until the early 1990s, care of the collection was entrusted to the directors of the University’s Fine Arts Department who, in addition to their regular teaching and administrative duties, were responsible for developing and managing the collection as well as disseminating its works. In 1966, when a gallery was set up, running it became yet another one of their tasks. Prior to the early 1980s, the directors and curators of the collection were also artists. Works by some of these individuals were incorporated into the collection over the years, in some cases even during these individuals’ tenures.

While these works were consistent with other acquisitions since they demonstrate the connection between the collection and the teaching staff of the University’s Fine Arts Department, their mode of acquisition does raise ethical questions. Codes of ethics and best practices standards that frame acquisition policies today, would not permit an institution’s director to acquire his or her own works. It is possible that a set of special procedures accompanied these acquisitions however there are no document or minutes that attest to this.

Some documents from the 1960s do mention a few guidelines to be followed in assembling the University’s collection, none of them address questions of ethics in relation to acquisitions or provide any procedures for dealing with this issue. There is scant documentation of acquisition contexts, and it is often incomplete and found mainly in correspondence. Acquisition activity today in public institutions exists within a more equitable framework, but this has not always been the case.

Collecting: The inflections of a Practice. Installation View. Photo: Paul Smith.

The collection contains two sets of decorative objects purchased at flea markets. These sets, made up of a water pitcher and glasses in matching patterns, were produced using a technique that involved blowing glass into a mould. The little information we have on them indicates that they were most likely imported from Austria or Germany during the latter part of the 19th century.

The inclusion of these objects in the University’s collection raises the issue of the sources on which a curator can draw to acquire works for the collection entrusted to his care. In principle, it it is better to favor acquisition sources that can easily confirm the authenticity of a piece as well as legal proof of ownership, a work’s provenance being an important consideration. Flea markets do not represent the most reliable of sources.

Acquisition involves considerable risk since it transforms art works into heritage objects. Works included in public collections are there for posterity and, if conserving them is to have any legitimacy, they must have some special importance. Institutions that collect today base their activities on a set of selection criteria that form part of an acquisition policy. Consistency with the institution’s mandate, the artist’s reputation and the cultural significance of the work are probably the most widely accepted criteria. Some works are already valued as heritage objects prior to their acquisition and the measure of their value is determined by both the artist’s career and the objects’ history. There is, however, no way of ascertaining the long term value and significance of a work of art produced today, thus making the acquisition process complex

From the beginning, the University’s collecting practices were oriented toward the fine arts and, more specifically, toward Canadian art. The sets of pitchers and glasses mentioned above do not readily correspond to the Gallery’s mandate. It is interesting to note that these objects, the acquisition of which was undoubtedly motivated by their aesthetic value, eventually came to be recognized as heritage objects by virtue of their belonging to a public collection. Acquired in the late 1970s and most likely forgotten among other acquisitions, they were not catalogued before 2006; still, they are an integral part of the collection. The Gallery has endowed them with a heritage value, separating these objects from their original function and transforming them into museum pieces.

Collecting: The inflections of a Practice. Installation View. Photo: Paul Smith.

The inclusion of ethnographic (African, Pre-Columbian, Roman) works in the collection has greatly contributed to its heterogeneity. Acquired essentially by way of donations, these works do not correspond with the guidelines the Gallery has established to shape the development of its collection over the years. Acquisitions-related documents found in the archives indicate that the Gallery seems to always have had the mandate to collect works by Canadian artists. This irregularity in the collection raises questions regarding both the parameters of the Gallery’s collecting mandate and their actual application.

Before the opening of the Gallery in 1966, collecting included the acceptance of donations of Pre-Columbian works. Faced with this precedent, the Gallery’s directors deemed it relevant to add to this body of works. However, the Gallery’s programming, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, did not provide contexts to exhibit such works. Their inclusion in the collection points to discrepancies between the Gallery’s conservation and programming practices on the one hand, and its mandate on the other. Moreover, the works themselves cannot be properly conserved since the Gallery lacks the conservation expertise and the proper context in which to exhibit them, therefore denying them the exposure they should receive. Currently, we are considering a long-term loan to an institution with the expertise to remedy these deficiencies.

Collecting: The inflections of a Practice. Installation View. Photo: Paul Smith.

The professionalization of heritage conservation practices has been at the forefront of the transformations that have occurred in the museum community in recent decades. The Canadian Conservation Institute, an organization founded in 1972 by the Minister of Canadian Heritage, has played a major role in this matter. The existence of this organization, whose mandate is to “ … promote the proper care and preservation of Canada’s moveable cultural heritage and to advance the practice, science, and technology of conservation,”⁶ has made it possible to develop the means required to ensure the conservation of heritage objects.

In tandem with the training of curators, art museums have become aware of the fact that certain practices and materials must be avoided when dealing with the works in their collections. Labels are no longer affixed directly on the surfaces of sculptures, and works on paper are prevented from coming into contact with acidic paper. Also, care is taken to avoid overexposing works on paper, particularly in places with strong light. These few examples of changes in conservation practices attest to the development of a body of expertise. Consequently, the Gallery’s collection, like other public collections, shows signs of the professionalization of conservation practices.

Collecting: The inflections of a Practice. Installation View. Photo: Paul Smith.

Prior to 1966, the collection was not associated with a gallery. For a number of years it was exhibited, in its entirety, in the buildings of Sir George Williams University and Loyola College. Given these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that some works in the collection were stolen or lost. There are numerous reasons for the disappearance of such works, ranging from inadequate security to the fact that some pieces were either misplaced or appropriated by the tenants of the offices to which they had been lent.

The dissemination of the works in the collection is regulated by conservation standards that may sometimes seem extreme to those unfamiliar with the world of conservation. Compliance with these standards is part, nonetheless, of the Gallery’s duties, since it is obliged, following the acquisition of works, to maintain and present them in the best possible conditions. In this respect, the manner in which it manages the loan of works stems from many years of experience in disseminating the collection. Through a system of trial and error, the Gallery staff has learned how to properly exhibit the works, which are lent only on the condition of compliance with the Gallery’s Loans Policy.

In addition to helping prevent the loss of objects, the provisions arising from this policy enable the Gallery staff to ensure that its works are kept in suitable conditions, in accordance with the standards of the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) and the relevant code of professional conduct. In 1982, Heritage Canada assigned the Gallery a category “A” status. By virtue of this ranking, works in its collection have been deemed cultural property by the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board (CCPERB). In this context, the works’ conservation conditions assume greater importance.

Collecting: The inflections of a Practice. Installation View. Photo: Paul Smith.

Some of the works held by the Gallery are not part of the collection and have never been accessioned, since no documentation indicates that they were ever acquired by the Gallery. In some cases, it is not known why they are in our holdings at all. They may have been submitted for acquisition but refused and not returned to their owners or forgotten after exhibitions were taken down. By virtue of the moral rights that the Copyright Act confers on artists above and beyond their title of ownership, which refers to the respect for works of art, the Gallery must conserve these objects even though it did not approve their acquisition. A task that raises problems given the lack of storage space.

Some works were catalogued for the first time in 2006 such as stolen and missing works, along with other pieces such as the sets of water pitchers and glasses found in this exhibition. Works not currently part of the collection are also likely to be integrated into it in the future. The Gallery just began documenting them this year.

Acquisitions and activities related to the collection were rarely documented in the 1960s and 1970s and, when they were, it seems that the documentation system then in place was not sufficiently exhaustive to allow for an explicit transmission of practices.

If, for example, we inquire which works in the collection were donated and which were purchased, we find that 80% were donations and that donors’ names are associated with them. However, there are some aspects that documentation methods do not make clear: they do not always reveal, for example, that the names associated with works are not always those of their donors, but those corresponding to a sum of money matching the works’ value. In the early 1960s, for example, the University set up an Art Fund. Samuel Schecter called upon various donors to contribute to it, in the process drawing up a list of works he wanted the University to acquire. He then matched donors’ names with the works he acquired using the money each had put into the Fund, taking care to tag contributors’ names to the sums in question. In such cases, donors may have been able to choose works from Schecter’s list with which they would subsequently be associated, and may even have been able to suggest pieces for purchase. But we cannot be entirely sure that such donors were systematically advised of the works with which their names would eventually be associated.

This example of indirect donations that are not evident from the Gallery’s files is merely an indication of other documentation problems that call for vigilance as we attempt to understand collecting practices after the fact. In this case, the provenance of works becomes unclear.

The interest in documenting acquisitions and other actions associated with the management of the collection has grown and techniques have been refined. Some works in the collection acquired long ago are still poorly documented and, in certain cases, nonetheless quite rare, we have no information on how they should be exhibited. We are unfamiliar with some of the artists whose works are in our possession despite extensive searches for information. This is explained in part by the rapid growth of the collection after it was initiated, as well as the limited human resources available to the Gallery in the past. As a result, there were fewer opportunities for documenting and disseminating it. The creation of a collections curator position in 2004 represents a turning point in its history.

Collecting: The inflections of a Practice. Installation View. Photo: Paul Smith.

In the spring of 2008, lack documentation had direct consequences on the presentation of a work owned by the Gallery. Curator Andrew Hunter wanted to include in his exhibition This is Montreal!⁷ a work by the artist Nancy Herbert, on whom we have very little information. The piece in question is a large-scale knitted form made, perhaps, in 1972 and acquired in 1973. Many unsuccessful attempts were made to locate the artist or her estate, and any information on her work as a whole. Through deduction and interpretation, an appropriate hanging method was established.

Somewhat later, in the fall of 2009, the Gallery received an e-mail from Herbert’s nephew and, a week later, her daughter visited the Gallery. They had found an article on the Internet about the exhibition This is Montreal! The artist’s name was mentioned in the article, which also carried a photograph of the work in question. Over a year after making its inquiries, the Gallery obtained more information on a work in its possession for almost 40 years, and finally confirmed that it had exhibited the piece correctly.

Collecting: The inflections of a Practice. Installation View. Photo: Paul Smith.

A document entitled “Brief on a Collection of Original Canadian Paintings for Sir George Williams University,”⁸ which dates back to the early 1960s, describes two guidelines pertaining to the dissemination of the collection. It states that the entire collection should be exhibited each year and an accompanying publication should also be produced. We do not know exactly until which year it was still possible to show all the works in the collection in a single exhibition, but very few publications about the collection were produced before the 1980s.

The nature of exhibitions organized by the Gallery has changed since the collection was begun. Today, university art galleries in particular focus on problematizing artistic and curatorial practices as well as examining museological issues. It is no longer sufficient to “display” works. Moreover, it is no longer physically possible to show the entire collection at one and the same time, since there are simply too many works for the space available. Moreover, such an undertaking would run counter to the legislative, ethical and professional conduct frameworks currently in effect. Legislations and organizations have been created through the years to govern activities involving museum collections. The Copyright Act, which regulates the exhibition and reproduction of works, is undoubtedly among the most important of these.

The dissemination of works has become more complex following the adoption of this Act, since it can restrict institutions while being, in many respects, beneficial to artists. According to the Copyright Act, artists continue to hold the copyright on their works even after these are sold. They retain certain moral rights with respect to these works, even if they have relinquished ownership, and these rights mean that the artists must be consulted before their works are used. Exhibiting and reproducing are among the “interventions” targeted by this Act. Works executed prior to June 1988 may be exhibited without the authorization of the artist or his/her estate, but they cannot be reproduced or posted on the Internet if the author has not been dead for over 50 years. While this law has resulted in greater recognition and slightly more money for artists, smaller institutions do not always have the means to disseminate their collections since it involves obtaining authorizations that sometimes require, in addition to extensive research to locate artists, the payment of certain fees.

In the summer of 2009, the Gallery completed the process of digitizing the works in its collection and posting them online. This project, which lasted three years, involved finding the addresses of artists who had works in the collection in order to ask their permission to reproduce their works and put them in online databases, in particular Artefacts Canada (CHIN, Heritage Canada) and Info-Muse (SMQ). Four hundred and thirty-one works from the collection can now be viewed online. Unfortunately, it was not possible to include in this project artists whose work is represented by organizations that administer copyright, like the Society for Reproduction Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers in Canada (SODRAC). This would have resulted in the payment of fees which overall are beyond the financial resources of the Gallery. The Gallery is working on a way to both circulate the works of artists while offering them an equitable payment for that service.

Institutions that collect must pay particular attention to how they select acquisitions. The quantity and quality of the works acquired are important not only in relation to the orientation they have adopted, but also in relation to the space and financial resources available for their preservation. For example, the acquisition of too great a number of works can lead to a lack of adequate storage space and affect the capacity of the institution to properly document and disseminate them. How then does one acquire when storage space is limited? It may be more judicious to only acquire a few items of an artist’s practice while ensuring that they are particularly representative of it. Are many works by the same artist, produced at the same moment, of the same style and medium, more informative of that artist’s practice than a single work? When resources are limited, acquisitions should be restricted to the most representative examples of what they seek to represent.

In this context donations can complexify the selection of works. It can present interesting possibilities for acquisitions but the works offered do not always correspond to what an institution is looking for. Some may be less representative of a way of working or of the practice of an artist than the ones acquired by purchase. It may be wiser for institutions to resist the integration of less significant works in their collection. However, there are many reasons why this is not always feasible. Gifts and purchases should reflect as closely as possible the acquisition and programming mandate of the Gallery. In the long term this allows for a collection with a more coherent content.

The collection is essentially made up of donations. While documentation problems make it impossible to accurately establish the number of works actually given to the Gallery, its current files indicate that nearly 80%⁹ of its holdings derive from donations. Works by Anne Savage represents one third of the collection, thus the Gallery’s most important donation. It consists mainly of sketches that inform us on the artist’s working method and their number could warrant the creation of a study centre devoted to Savage’s work. However, this would require that a greater number of more accomplished works, such as paintings, be acquired. To act in this way neither corresponds to the Gallery’s mandate or its programming direction. The Gallery, however, must preserve this body of work, which does not quite correspond to its orientation, and thus cannot receive the attention it deserves. Nevertheless, it remains available for consultation as a study collection for anyone who may be interested.

Collecting: The inflections of a Practice. Installation View. Photo: Paul Smith.

¹ The Government of Québec created the Ministère des Affaires culturelles in 1961, four years after the Government of Canada created the Canada Council.

² Suzanne Lemerise, “L’art–l’artiste–l’école,” in Les arts visuels au Québec dans les années soixante: La reconnaissance de la modernité, Francine Couture ed. (Montreal, VLB éditeur, 1993), 322. [Our translation]

³ Francine Couture, “Présentation,” Les arts visuels au Québec dans les années soixante, 14.

⁴ The directors of the Fine Arts Department of Sir George Williams University and, subsequently, Concordia University were responsible for the Gallery’s collection from its inception until 1992.

⁵ “Brief on a Collection of Canadian Paintings for Sir George Williams University,” October 12, 1962. 6 http://www.cci-icc.gc.ca/about-apropos/wwa-qsn/index-eng.aspx, consulted on November 23, 2009.

⁷ This is Montreal!, an exhibition curated by Andrew Hunter was presented at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery from March 14 to April 19, 2008.

⁸ This document is presented in the vitrine accompanying the grouping of works and documents under the heading “A Collection Plan. A Donor.”

⁹ The Gallery’s collection now comprises over 1700 works.

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