On May 20, 2010, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) opened a secret vault of valuable artworks to the media. The board's Archival, Artifact and Fine Art Collection is thought to be the only one of its kind in North America; it includes artworks, archeological artifacts from digs on school sites, school records, furniture and and equipment. Among the holdings are a small number of paintings by Canadian artists considered to have high resale value. The invitation to media underlines the Board's decision not to sell any of the more valuable works to reduce its deficit; instead, the collection will be kept together for the benefit of students in TDSB schools.
"We're trying to get the message out that it's not for sale," said Shawna White, an art curator on contract to the TDSB who has worked at such prestigious institutions as Oxford University's Ashmolean Institute, the State Museum of New York in Albany, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum and Sotheby's auction house.
The field of "object-based learning" is a cutting-edge area in educational circles, and so far has mainly been available only to the richest schools in the world, pointed out Greg McKinnon, Manager and Archivist with TDSB Heritage Services. This collection is therefore an invaluable tool to extend object-based learning of a high order to every one of the Board's 600 schools and 250,000 students.
Toronto District School Board Art and Archeology Holdings
The collection, which comprises more than one million objects in total, is currently housed in a location that is not made public, in order to maintain the security of the valuable paintings and other objects.
One large storage room contains the archival materials. These include objects found during TDSB-sponsored excavations of sites like Fort Rouillé (a French military fortress near Toronto's waterfront) and the home of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, who left enslavement in Kentucky to become business owners in Canada in the early 1800s. (The site of their home is now the schoolyard of Sackville Street School.) There are also many school records and photographs of use to scholars researching social history.
A second room is filled with shelving units that store furniture and fittings illustrating 150 years of school life in Toronto, from desks and chairs to typewriters and trophies, musical instruments, student artworks and even a 1970s-era offset lithography printing press.
The most glamorous part of the holdings is contained in a smaller room off the artifact storage area. Here, on racks, are stored a few dozen works of art by well known Canadian painters, paintings owned by the Board that have been evaluated as being worth $5,000 or more. These have been identified in a survey of school buildings and brought into this central repository for their protection. Many, acquired years ago by donation, had previously hung in principals' offices, auditoriums or hallways, without special security or conservation measures.
Canadian Art Treasures
Highlights of the collection include
- Autumn Scene by Tom Thomson (pictured). Now valued at about $1.5 million, the painting was bought for a mere $25 after the painter's early death in a boating accident. Though it is less than one foot square, its vivid colour contrasts, deft and robust brushwork, masterful composition and relatively high degree of finish make it an especially attractive example of the famous artist's work.
- Cranberry Lake by Franklin Carmichael, a Group of Seven member (pictured). The work, dating from about 1936, shows a moody lake scene with skeletal trees. It was badly damaged by moisture from a burst pipe, but has been restored. It is estimated to be worth about $500,000.
- Other work by Group of Seven members, like the dramatic Sunset After Rains by J.E.H. MacDonald, 1914 (pictured), a large, brilliantly coloured image of golden trees entitled The Blacksmith's Shop (1930) by A.J. Casson and a swirling landscape by A.Y. Jackson.
Also noteworthy are Young Pines in Light by west-coast Canadian painter Emily Carr (pictured); a 1917 painting of young women sewing, perhaps in a home economics class, by Toronto artist George A. Reid; a vivid screen print by groundbreaking Quebec artist Jean-Paul Riopelle and large, strongly coloured semi-abstracts by First Nations painter Norval Morrisseau. Among other artists represented in the collection are Jack Shadbolt, Mary Pratt, Alex Colville, Charles Pachter, Jack Bush, Aiko Suzuki, Charles Comfort and Doris McCarthy.
Taken altogether, these art holdings represent a significant group of work. The TDSB will be seeking creative partnerships with other appropriate organizations to help care for it as well as to ensure that it is viewed by students and members of the public as much as possible. Meanwhile, the Board intends to post digital versions of all the key works in an online gallery as one of the first steps in presenting this remarkable body of work to be appreciated by a wider audience.
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Sarah B. Hood - Author of We Sure Can! How Jams and Pickles are Reviving the Lure and Lore of Local Food and Toronto: The Unknown City.
