As part of its mandate to provide oversight for the Donovan Collection and leadership on matters related to its maintenance, development, and curation, the Donovan Art Committee hosts events designed to connect and engage students, staff, and the wider community with the artworks and stories found within them on campus.
Denyse Thomasos photographed with Babylon. Image © The Estate of Denyse Thomasos.
Seeing What Surrounds Us: Denyse Thomasos and Babylon
MONDAY 17 MARCH 2025 | 6 PM | Father Madden Hall
Please register here. Space is limited. Admission is free.
- Carr Hall | Father Madden Hall | 100 St Joseph St, Toronto
- Please email james.roussain@utoronto.ca if you are experiencing difficulties registering for this event or if you have any accessibility requirements. We will work with you to make appropriate arrangements.
In partnership with Fr. Daniel Donovan and the University of St. Michael’s College, the Donovan Collection Committee welcomes you to an event to celebrate the recent inclusion of Denyse Thomasos’ Babylon (2005), a key piece within the College’s Donovan Collection, in Denyse Thomasos: just beyond, a career-retrospective exhibition of the late Thomasos’ (1964-2012) work that recently completed a tour across Canada with stops in Toronto, Saskatoon, Vancouver, Halifax, and St. John’s.
Featuring an in-conversation talk with Renée van der Avoird, Associate Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario and member of the curatorial team for Denyse Thomasos: just beyond and Gail Luciano, Denyse Thomasos’ sister, moderated by Barbara Fischer, Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, this event will encourage attendees to pause and see the artworks that surround them throughout the St. Michael’s College campus.
Join us for an exploration of Denyse Thomasos, Babylon, and of the Donovan Collection.
About the Donovan Collection
A collection of over 400 works by over 200 predominantly Canadian artists, the Donovan Collection has been created by Fr. Daniel Donovan and represents a cross-section of art exhibited in Toronto from the early 1980s to the present. The artworks that form the collection are installed throughout the St. Michael’s College campus with the express purpose of fostering connection with the visual arts.
About the Speakers
Renée van der Avoird is the Associate Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Specializing in work by modern and contemporary women artists, she has curated exhibitions including Pacita Abad (2024); Sarindar Dhaliwal: When I grow up I want to be a namer of paint colours (2023); Denyse Thomasos: just beyond (2022); Kim Ondaatje: The House on Piccadilly Street (2021); and Betty Goodwin: Moving Towards Fire (2019). Prior to joining the AGO in 2018, van der Avoird held positions as Associate Curator/Registrar at the MacLaren Art Centre, Barrie; Assistant Director of Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto; and Curatorial Mentor at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. She has contributed writing to various periodicals including Border Crossings, C Magazine, Black Flash, and exhibitions such as Russna Kaur: DREAM MACHINE (try walking on a path of splinters with no shoes) (W Projects, 2023); Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment (McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 2021); and Magnetic North: Imagining Canada in Painting 1910-1940 (Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, (2021).
Gail Luciano is Denyse Thomasos’ youngest sister. Born in Trinidad, she moved to Toronto with Denyse and their family in 1970. She graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Psychology. She later attended the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) where she graduated with a Master of Education specializing in Adult Education.
Gail has a passion for working with teams to build an effective and healthy organizational culture. She is currently a Senior Consultant in the Learning and Organization Development department at Mackenzie Health hospital in York Region where she designs, implements and delivers a wide range of best practice learning programs and services to support strategic and operational excellence and the patient experience. Earlier in her career she worked for the Canadian Cancer Society where she managed the service delivery operations of a multi-province smoking cessation program.
Barbara Fischer is the Executive Director/Chief Curator of the Art Museum at the University of Toronto (comprised of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery and the University of Toronto Art Centre) as well as an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream in the Master of Visual Studies program in Curatorial Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.
Fischer has curated award-winning exhibitions in contemporary art and its histories, including solo exhibitions of Stan Douglas, Rebecca Belmore, Will Kwan, John Greyson, Wendy Coburn, Deanna Bowen, and Kent Monkman’s Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience, among many others. She curated the internationally circulating retrospective exhibition General Idea Editions 1967-1995 (Kunstverein Munich, Kunsthalle Zurich, Kunst-Werke ICA Berlin, CAAC Seville, Henry Art Gallery Seattle, and the Andy Warhol Museum Pittsburgh, among others), and Projections (2007), the first major survey (and touring exhibition) on projection-based works in the history of contemporary art in Canada. In 2010, she partnered with five curators from across Canada to produce the first survey of conceptual art in Canada, Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980, which toured across Canada and in reconfigured form to the Badischer Kunstverein (Germany) and the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris (2010 to 2014).
About St. Michael’s College
St. Michael’s was established in 1852 by the Basilian Fathers to serve the growing Catholic population in Toronto, educating the children of immigrants who had come to Canada in search of a better life for their families. Historically rooted in the educational mission shaped by the Basilians, the Sisters from the Congregations of St. Joseph and Loretto and other key community members, St. Michael’s seeks to build a faith and learning community committed to the search for truth and meaning in our contemporary world. Our graduates are leaders in their communities, effecting positive change that respects and honours the dignity of all.