The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 61

ART Page Keeping current with Canadian art (Continuing a series on the staff curators at the National Gallery their careers and aspirations) By Nancy Baele Citizen correspondent The curator Charles National of Hill, Canadian takes Gallery's art, top marks for innovative dressing. His shoulder-length braids, jeans and brown pin-stripe, jacket with a claw lapel pin reflect a concern with innovation that he extends to the National Gallery. "It is terribly important," Hill says, "that the National Gallery not become static." As curator of Canadian art, Hill is responsible for all the historic Canadian art in the collection and for acquiring, displaying and caring for painting, sculpture and the decorative arts from 1850 to 1960. As well he organizes exhibitions. With so many irons in the fire his office bulges with filing cabinets crammed with pertinent notes on individual artists and bits and pieces of information culled from magazine and newspaper articles.

It's an encyclopedic repository which will be of help to people doing research in the relatively new field of Canadian Art History. Hill's own interest in Canadian art was sparked as a high school student in Ottawa, when he was taken to the National Gallery. "I remember being impressed with the Krieghoffs and thinking how big The Ice Bridge, Longueil and Winter Landscape were." Later at McGill University, where he did undergraduate work in French Literature and the History of Art, he found that he felt spiritually enriched by the art courses. He went on to complete an M.A. in the History of Art at the University of Toronto in 1969, and lectured for a year at the Ontario College of Art.

While living in Toronto during the early. '70s, Hill became increasingly involved in the gay liberation movement and gay counselling. He temporarily put his career on hold and worked in a Church Street delicatessen so that he could devote his energy to those causes. In 1972 he came to the National Gallery as assistant to Dennis Reid, then curator of post-Confederation art and in 1980 was appointed curator. He knows the collection well and has plans over the next few Friday, Ottawa, Citizen, The 8 MAR MAR -Russell Mant, Citizen Charles Hill (above) and Rosemarie Tovell (right) years to fill in gaps, to prints strengthen regional areas as working well as representations of "There particular artists.

"The permanent collection is under constant re-appraisal. In order to show the climate of the times, works in the collection should be oriented to movements. "That means collecting the best examples of less important artists in addition to fleshing out what we already own by major Canadian artists." One of Hill's ongoing projects is one volume (A-F) of the five volume illustrated catalogue of the permanent collection. He is also building up an information bank on artists and Gaps in knowledge about Canadian art history tantalize him. "I am very interested in the whole development of abstraction in the '40s and '50s.

And I would like to fully explore the link between 20th century Canadian art and British art. "Some major work is now being started on early woodcarving. A history of sculpture in Canada has yet to be done. Like Hill, Rosemarie Tovell, assistant curator of Canadian and drawings, is also in a wide open field. is so much to do.

Ca- nadian printmaking doesn't have a rounded history and I would like to give it that," she says enthusiastically. Two societies, The Canadian Etching Society and The Association of Canadian Etchers in Toronto in 1884, are starting points for Tovell's detective sleuthing. Her job allows her to play at being Sherlock Holmes in tracking down elusive facts. Tovell often starts from scratch, tracing artists' descendants, sifting through old exhibition catalogues, scanning dealer's ads and doing art historical research which turns up new leads. "Research and exhibitions I consider to be my real work." says Tovell, who has received praise for the critical writing she did on Milne when she organized the Milne prints and drawings exhibition four years ago.

"I really do believe you must write about art in clear, concise English and not hide behind terminology." Her concern with straightforward communication goes back to her days as a journalism stu- eye-opener. dent at the University of West- "It was interesting to see the ern Ontario before deciding different installations in that she preferred art history. Guelph, Thunder Bay and HalAfter completing her BA in ifax and consequently to see fine arts at Queen's University, different story lines in the she took a year's training in show. And it was a good opmuseology at the National Gal- portunity get to know the kind lery before graduating with an of audience that actually atM.A. in fine arts from the Uni- tends the shows we assemble." versity of Toronto in 1971.

When she is not working, She welcomes opportunities Tovell is a passionate gardener. to meet the public. A travelling "I enjoy the physical work. exhibition done in conjunction find it soothing and quite miwith the Archives on the His- raculous seeing lettuce and tory of Canadian Prints was an flowers pushing.