Posted Apr. 7/09
By Susan Hickman
A retired Carleton English professor and Dean of Arts has bequeathed his estate, which includes a substantial collection of contemporary Canadian art and a 140-year-old brick home in Williamsburg, to Carleton.
Carleton's art gallery (CUAG) will benefit substantially from the donation of A. Trevor Tolley and his wife Glenda M. Patrick, says gallery director Diana Nemiroff. The Tolley and Patrick Endowment Fund will be used to create a gallery in CUAG to showcase Canadian art and an endowed professorship in Canadian art.
Nemiroff notes the Tolley and Patrick collection "is a good fit with our collection, because our focus is on contemporary Canadian art. It will allow us to fill in weaker areas."
CUAG, which opened in 1992, houses some 27,000 works of art.
The Tolley bequest, says Nemiroff, worth an estimated $2 million, will allow the gallery to add to its collection and to properly take care of the works.
"It is important to recognize that Prof. Tolley has thought of the art gallery. It is a most welcome gesture and forms a nucleus of gifts we have received from former faculty at Carleton."
Tolley and Patrick, who met at Carleton and later married, bought their 1870 brick house in Williamsburg in 1973. Built on the shores of the Hoasic Creek in a Class 1 wetland, the house is surrounded by five acres of garden.
Their extensive art collection – about 120 works of art – includes a work by Toronto artist Joyce Wieland worth about $40,000. Major contemporary Canadian paintings by such artists as Jack Bush, Jack Shadbolt, Graham Coughtry and John Meredith, as well as Gordon Rayner, Jane Martin (who earned an MA at Carleton) and John Boyle, hang throughout their home. There is also a Tony Urquhart sculpture, a Henry Moore print, a 15th-century Albrecht Dürer woodcut as well as a Rembrandt print.
A professor emeritus since 1997, Tolley has continued to write and edit books in his Williamsburg home.
His decision to bequeath the art to Carleton was a way to keep the collection intact.
"The notion of setting up a Centre for Canadian Art is also attractive. It seems like a nice thing to do," says Tolley, who will be 82 in May.
In 1998, Tolley was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom. He is a founding member of the SAW Gallery and last year he received a 20-year service award from the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association.
