Seneca Polytechnic’s art collection features more than 500 pieces that are on display throughout the campuses and online.
It all started with the purchase of a painting by Norval Morrisseau, also known as Copper Thunderbird, a self-taught Ojibway artist who is considered a trailblazer for contemporary Indigenous art. His painting Sunset Ceremony, which depicts a man with bones pierced through his flesh at a Sun Dance, became the first piece in Seneca’s collection.
At the time in 1974, it was an important painting and Seneca’s newly formed collection committee was fortunate to buy it for a knock-down price of $500 when Jack Pollock’s gallery, then across from the Art Gallery of Ontario, was closing. Knowing they were buying for a public institution Mr. Pollock offered them the piece, which they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford.
The five-person committee, chaired by Gordon Parker, then a professor in the English studies department, had been allotted $3,000 to start a collection. The department had introduced an artist-in-residence program in 1973-74 to demonstrate Seneca’s commitment to the liberal and applied arts. And the idea to have a collection came out of that initiative and was approved by Dr. William T. Newnham, who served as Seneca’s founding president from 1966 to 1984.
The early collection focused on Canadian prints and drawings, which were placed in central hubs — hallways, foyers and the library — for all to enjoy.
After about 18 months the original committee disbanded and a three-person committee chaired by Wayne Norrison, then chair of the applied arts division, was formed. Committee members David Phillips, then a Canadian art history professor, and Eldon Hagglund, then a fashion design professor, were given a free hand to expand the collection.
In addition to pieces from Toronto galleries, they started to acquire work from across the country. Farm Family, by one of Canada’s early modernists, Calgary’s Maxwell Bates, and the print Isolde and Cow, by Liverpool, Nova Scotia-based artist Roger Savage were added.
The collection’s second large painting, Ted Godwin’s Zeus & Danae, from the Calgary-based artist’s Tartan Series, was purchased thanks to Canadian jazz legend Oscar Peterson. The world-renowned pianist, who was known for his generosity and support of the arts, gave a concert at Minkler Auditorium, at Newnham Campus in the winter of 1977 and donated the proceeds for Seneca to purchase a work of art.
Mr. Phillips continued to buy art until 1983 when the collection was put on hold due to hard economic times and educational cutbacks. In the late 1990s, a third collection committee was established. It was chaired by Mr. Norrison, then vice president, international and business development, and rounded out by Mr. Phillips, John McBride, a former professor and co-ordinator of the Event Management – Event & Exhibit Design program and Elaine Brodie, then a photographer and professor with the faculty of Communication, Art & Design.
Mr. McBride repaired works that had been damaged and Ms. Brodie experimented with an online site. The bulk of the collection was moved into the Minkler Auditorium foyer. The committee didn’t buy anything, however they started an annual art competition for faculty and staff. The winners received a cash prize and the selected works were added to the collection. Johanne Daoust, Professor, School of Creative Arts and Animation, was the first recipient and Jack Burman, Professor, School of English and Liberal Studies, the second. (The collection no longer acquires works by staff or anyone with close ties to Seneca.)
Without a purchasing budget, the committee disbanded in 2001. That year, the Minkler was demolished to make way for a campus expansion. The collection, apart from a few pieces assigned to offices, was put in storage at the King Campus where it hibernated for four years.
In 2004, Ron Currie, then vice-president financial, appointed Marsha Wineman, a former technician, with the Fashion Arts department, to complete an inventory of the collection. She rehung the collection in strategic areas on the Newnham, York and King campuses and in 2005 on the new Markham campus.
By 2006, the college established the fourth art committee chaired by Henry Decock, then associate vice-president academic. While a few members came and went, the active members were Mr. Phillips, Ms. Wineman, Ms. Brodie and Phillip Woolf, then a drawing and painting professor. With encouragement from Mr. Currie, Seneca re-established a purchase fund and the committee was able to expand the collection again.
With financial support from what was then known as Aboriginal Student Services, the collection purchased works by prominent Indigenous artists such as: Terrance Houle, an interdisciplinary media artist and member of the Blood Tribe and Christian Morrisseau, an Ojibwe who paints in the Woodland style developed by his father Norval Morrisseau; and Robert Houle, an Anishinaabe Saulteaux contemporary artist.
In 2012, Waddington’s auction house had a program that helped fund a work sold to a public institution and Seneca successfully bid on Toronto-based Stephen Andrews’ linoleum print Crowd.
The collection continues to expand, incorporating contemporary Canadian art with a focus on adding pieces by artists who reflect the diverse population of the times. Some notable additions include: Adanna, by Toronto-based Benny Bing, whose work explores identity, gender and Blackness; a mask from a series known as Building Black Amorphia, by Toronto-based Ekow Nimako, a LEGO artist; and Relationship or Transaction, a replica of a Western Great Lakes covenant chain confederacy wampum belt made out of Canadian and counterfeit $5 bills in place of traditional beads, by Toronto-based Vanessa Dion Fletcher, a Potawatomi and Lenape two-spirit artist.
The Art Committee is chaired by Mark Solomon, Associate Dean, Student Services & Indigenous Education, who assumed the role in October 2023. The everyday management of the art collection is overseen by the Art Coordinator.
Written with files from David Phillips
