Author: Re-submitted_by_Julia_Merritt, Contributing Editor

This article is re-printed with the permission of the originating publisher of this article: Canadian Art Magazine, Winter 1999 Issue ( Volume 16, Number 4) ,the art collector Father Daniel Donovan, and the interviewer/ author of this article, Barbara Steinman. http://www.canadianart.ca/ A Believer (as first published in Canadian Art Magazine) Father Daniel Donovan has built an impressive collection of recent art. Barbara Steinman asks him why. With the relative modest means of a professor of theology, Father Daniel Donovan has collected more then 120 works of contemporary Canadian art in a panoply of media. For years, the art spread throughout his living quarters, but recently it was installed in the newly renovated Odette Hall at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, where Father Donovan has an office. One day, after he had bought my work for collection, I accepted his invitation to visit. It was a with a mix of curiousity and trepidation. I wondered how my work would breathe in such a context. An acute collector with a sly sense of humour, who speaks of meaning and the universality of grace, Donovan takes as much pleasure in showing his art as any artist. The unity of the works in the collection is evidence of his vision : astute and persuasive, it creates a context that expands meaning, alters yet does not distort, reveals and respects. The art has gone to a good home. This summer I spoke with him again about his collection. Collecting How did you start collecting? The first two things I bought as souveniers when I was a student in Germany. Now these wonderful pieces are important to the collection. There are people who love art and long to own a work but can't make the leap, doubt the validity of their own intuition or taste. What would you say to them? There is something to be gotten over. You have to buy a piece because you like it, not because anyone else tells you to. It speaks to you. You can't just glance at this work--- you have to listen to it. It stimulates you, attracts you, but you're just not sure about it. That's a positive sign --- it has more to offer. If you totally get it, then don't get it. Influences Were there any artists or collectors in your family? No. My mother was a musician, involved in the church. There was a lot of good music in the background, though no visual arts. My father was a deeply, quietly religious person. He did not reflect the stereo-type of the Irish male. He was a very quiet man with a rootedness and an inwardness that influenced me profoundly, although he wasn't a cultured man or an educated man. What did he do? He was a policeman. One would never know it when he was at home. I marvel at the way he left his experience as a policeman outside our home. The standing figure upstairs of Ted Rettig's in some ways evokes my father. When did you acquire this piece that reminds you of your father? Actually I did not buy it for that reason. It was only after I had it that I recognized it. But you were drawn to it. It had a presence. Ted even called it Contemplative Figure. And, ironically, one way of reading the almond shape is that the hands are behind the back. It's a kind of police way of standing. Were there other influences that directed you towards the arts? The Philosophy of Art was the most memorable course of my undergraduate years at St. Michael's College, 1954 to 1958. It was given by a diocesan priest, a cultured, sophisticated and sensitive person who influenced me greatly. Like him, I did my doctorate in Europe, and now I'm a diocesan priest. Some people are surprised that a priest is so interested in art, has collected it over the years and I suspect that this man was a model for me. Cardinal Mercier of Belgium had said to him, "Il faut oser" ( Be daring ) and this is what he said to me.

Calling Many artists say they always knew they were an artist as if it were a calling, and others have a more reluctant relationship with the practice. Do you think being a priest has parallels to being an artist? At the heart of being a priest, there has to be a sense of vocation. And, as I see many artists, there is a kind of setting out for the unknown, a risk involved, an ongoing rediscovery of what and who they are, what they're doing, an element that they might not succeed just beyond the next path. There's a lack of stability in terms of a place in society. The level of commitment of some artists reminds me a bit of the religious person. Though a priest can be an institutional person and focus on that. Some artists choose the institutional life as well. Or there is a spiritual quest, a seeking, an ever-deepening awareness of insights into identification with the realm of mystery that goes beyond the everyday. At the heart of Catholic Christianity is the eucharist which one can approach in a very external kind of way. But it dawns on me in the actual celebrating of the eucharist that this is the most important moment of of my life, when I would be most authentic and and closest to what the artist experiences in a very creative moment. it's like the art and the religious experience have that parellel, these moments of great intensity. And then you withdraw from that. There are moments of slogging away, translating this thing into life, doing all the kinds of things that have to flow from it. But that's the moment that carries it, gives it meaning, a direction. Chatting with culture What else did you study? I studied the Greek philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, the pre-socratics and so on. I have a very historical sense of culture. In various ways in philosophy, history, theology, you move back and forth. People like Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, they're like people that you know, that you chat with, that you're dialogueing with. In some way, we're all contemporaries. Yet we live here, in this country, now. Practically speaking, if you want to have a collection and your not J.Paul Getty, then ... It's better to focus on the here and now? Right. Since I teach theology and religion as living realities, I'm interested in the culture in which I live and in art, particularly visual art, as an expression of that culture. This is how I became more interested in Canadian contemporary art. How did you learn about it? I see about 25 shows a month ---- every Saturday I go to the galleries. There are the established ones like Olga Korper, Sable-Castelli, Wynick/Tuck, Christopher Cutts, but it's also fun to go to these new little places, in storefronts down on Queen Street, where they're just starting, kids coming out of the Ontario Art College. I've bought some pieces from a young artist who rented space and had a show. You buy something and it's terrific. Whose the artist? Tanya Love. The little piece over the Xerox machine. I saw her somewhere and she greeted me as an old friend.

Place When did you plan the current installation? How did the current installation come about? By the late eighties, I began to think about what would happen to the collection. There were others who recognized it's value, the curator Ihor Holubizky and others who encouraged me to try and find some way to keep it together. If I donated it to a museum, it could disappear. When the plans to renovate this building were developed by the architect, it was clear it had found a place. When the individual works had formed a unity, as you put it, did the collection start to place demands on you? That happened after the installation here. So it's partly spatial and partly being able to see all the works installed. Ironically, I had a space for one last piece at the end. In this case, I was looking for something by a particular artist, looking for a sensibility rather than a particular work. There are different ways and approaches then to how the works arrive here: through thematic inquiry, a sensibility, a work which seems to insert itself. Sometimes a work is so apt for the collection, but I don't know where it'll go. I put it in my living quarters for awhile, and then it becomes apparent where it should go. Context What other contemporary collections have you visited? Steve Smart's and I have toured a few corporate collections, law firms and banks. What is the difference between what they've done and what you've done? This collection is different from most because of where it is installed. This is intimite, accessible, somewhere between a public and a private space. It's a more modest setting then a large bank with high ceilings and imposing spaces. With corporate collections, there can be a lot of spaces created to make an impression for clients. There is a dead-end corridor here which contains an enormous number of interesting pieces. Someone said it reminded her of an 18th century cabinet collection. There's more on the walls per square inch, and it;s clear that this is more then putting a little bit of art into a space to humanize it or to dress the walls. Do you think there is a point of view apparent in any collection? Well, my own point of view has alot to do with the content of art. Content is broader than what is imagesd in the art, it's a kind of spiritual content, a suggestion that the art is dealing with deeper human questions about meaning, death, life. Sometimes it becomes explicitly religious so that makes it distinctive from any other collections I have seen. How many artists are represented here? Just over a hundred pieces by approximately sixty artists are installed in this building. Have they all seen it? About twenty-five have seen this collection.