Introduction: Art in the University of Toronto Collections

Choosing artworks to be exhibited at the opening of the University of Toronto Gallery in the University Art Centre in November 1996 was a perplexing task, since the University collections are wildly heterogeneous. In the end, I decided to capitalize on exactly that aspect of them, and to exhibit a dozen or so works that were, by and large, as different from one another as they could be. To situate the University's art (ordinarily dispersed throughout the campus) within the diversity of the University's intellectual life, I asked people associated with the University in various ways to write about a chosen work of art for the University of Toronto Quarterly. In one case, the portrait of John Graves Simcoe in the president's office in Simcoe Hall, it seemed appropriate to have someone write who could represent visitors to the university—so a professor from York University has made a contribution as well. The essays here have come out of this trawling of a range of disciplines and interests in art.