“
This wasn't the only art show to feature works from the TD collection in the early 1970s.
Five pieces from the TD Collection were loaned out to the "Sculpture of the Inuit: Masterworks of the Canadian Arctic" art show, which opened in Vancouver in 1971, and went on to tour Paris, Copenhagen, London, Moscow, Leningrad and Philadelphia before closing in Ottawa in 1973.
The TD Collection, which had a “home base” in the TD corporate headquarters in downtown Toronto, appeared in a handful of smaller shows throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
The Bank’s art collection from Inuit communities held – and still holds – great significance not only for TD, but also for the public and the artists. By acquiring and displaying these art pieces, the Bank helped raise public awareness and appreciation of artists from Indigenous communities, which helped these artists gain further recognition for the importance of their work and developing meaningful relationships.
Getting all those art pieces from Toronto to San Francisco was no easy feat; it was a love-laden, laborious process of preparing, labelling, carefully packing, and shipping the pieces to ensure they arrived unharmed.
in the spring of 1973, hundreds of thousands of visitors poured into the prestigious M.H. de Young Memorial Museum (now the de Young Museum) in San Francisco to see the collection. TD arranged for free admission to reduce barriers to entry.
For many visitors, it was likely the first time they had been exposed to works of art from Inuit communities.
"At TD, art is a tool for creating social impact,” said Stuart Keeler, Senior Curator at TD.
“The ethos of the 1970s was an era when the women's rights, gay rights, rights of Indigenous Peoples, and environmental movements gained momentum with an arts and culture awakening to see and experience the world.”
Over the course of eight weeks
M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, California, USA, Circa. 1970
...the pair wound up selecting 108 sculptures and 128 prints for a journey down to San Francisco. And those collected works dazzled.
After careful consideration...
TD treated these objects as Fine Art with a capital 'F' and a capital 'A'...
...in an age when a lot of institutions were only viewing these pieces as anthropological curiosities to simply be compared, to be measured, to be kind of encyclopedically collected and captured."
Amy Korczynski, TD Archivist & Manager, Corporate Heritage.
Since then, the TD Inuit Art Collection has grown and expanded to encompass works by artists from many Indigenous communities.
These works have found a permanent home in the TD Gallery of Indigenous Art – a TD art gallery located in downtown Toronto’s TD South Tower, which is free to the public – and are on display throughout the Bank's North American footprint, including in retail branches and office spaces.
More poignantly, the collection is now helping to play a role in how the bank is approaching reconciliation.
thoughtful reflection and meaningful conversations among customers, colleagues, and communities.
"TD has a long history of working and collaborating with Indigenous Peoples, organizations, businesses and communities, and we recognize that there is more work to be done on our collective journey towards Truth and Reconciliation," Doris Bear, Vice President of Indigenous Banking at TD Bank Group, said.
"As TD works to ensure Indigenous Peoples have equitable access to financing, employment, training, and education opportunities, the TD collection of art by Indigenous Peoples continues to be an important catalyst for starting conversations about the unique challenges and systemic barriers facing many Indigenous Peoples and communities – and celebrating the rich histories, cultures, traditions, and stories of Indigenous communities as well."
Inside the artist's studio
Jason Baerg
It's a grey, drizzly November day in 2023 and the TD Stories team is venturing to Toronto's east end to visit artist Jason Baerg's studio in a nondescript mid-rise office building.
Baerg's warehouse-like space is expansive inside. The walls are dotted with brightly hued artwork – some completed and some clearly in progress. Shades of red are predominant – a welcome contrast to the dreary situation outside the studio windows.
"Right now, I'm really exploring the idea of the teachings through the medicine wheel," Baerg, a Toronto-based multi-discipline artist, professor at the OCAD University, and a member of the Metis Nation of Ontario, said of the work in his studio.
"In the medicine wheel, we start in the east where sun rises and ceremony begins, and that's associated with the colour of yellow… That was really my primary focus last year [in 2022]. In 2022, everything in my studio honoured the element of fire. In 2023, we were looking at the colour red in the south and we're honouring Earth metal."
Baerg – whose work includes painting, video, and fashion design – has a piece included in the TD Art Collection, a career milestone that didn't end when the TD art team acquired one of his pieces. In fact, the inclusion of his work in the TD collection has also led to an ongoing relationship with the Bank.
This relationship has led to professional growth opportunities for Baerg, including speaking on panels at prominent art shows. His students have benefited from his inclusion, too – at one point being treated to a behind-the-scenes tour of the TD collection. But maybe most importantly, he knows his work is being seen.
Keeler, Senior Curator at TD, decided to display Baerg's work in Saskatoon, a city where Baerg has family. This decision is aligned to the collection's strategy and commitment to thoughtfully place works by artists from the Indigenous community on ancestral territories as a gesture of respect and honour for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action.
“It's great that some of my family can see that work. I think that's really meaningful, and it's really thoughtful," Baerg said.
He said TD is not just acquiring art pieces, but is committed to protecting and caring for those pieces. This knowledge provides him with peace of mind; should his work become damaged, he knows it will be repaired. He also values that his work is being shared and disseminated among his community, which he says can have a real impact because it's important for Indigenous Peoples to see contemporary art from their communities in the spaces they frequent.
Back at his studio with TD Stories, Baerg slides naturally from artist to art professor by asking members of the TD team to share their interpretation of one of his new largescale paintings. Baerg is gracious, insisting there are no wrong answers, only a jumping off point for discussion – just like the art in the TD collection itself.
For 2024, he's focusing on water and the colour blue.
Baerg appreciates that the relationship with TD didn't end with the acquisition.
Call to Action No. 92 in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final report is directed specifically at corporate Canada “to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a reconciliation framework and to apply its principles, norms, and standards to corporate policy and core operational activities involving Indigenous peoples and their lands and resources.”
The spirit of the TD collection of art by Indigenous Peoples is aimed at sparking thoughtful reflection and meaningful conversations among customers, colleagues, and communities.
"TD has a long history of working and collaborating with Indigenous Peoples, organizations, businesses and communities, and we recognize that there is more work to be done on our collective journey towards Truth and Reconciliation," Doris Bear, Vice President of Indigenous Banking at TD Bank Group, said.
"As TD works to ensure Indigenous Peoples have equitable access to financing, employment, training, and education opportunities, the TD collection of art by Indigenous Peoples continues to be an important catalyst for starting conversations about the unique challenges and systemic barriers facing many Indigenous Peoples and communities – and celebrating the rich histories, cultures, traditions, and stories of Indigenous communities as well."
Again, I think "TD Indigenous art collection"
A nearly
60-year history
After the Bank of Toronto and the Dominion Bank of Canada merger in 1955 – which led to the creation of The Toronto-Dominion Bank and the organization we now know as TD Bank Group – TD was a modest player in the Canadian financial services industry.
According to TD Archivist, Korczynski, whose research supports the curatorial strategy for the TD collection, the Bank was trying to build its profile at the time. One avenue through which it sought to do this was by thinking outside the box when it came to its approach to art and architecture.
The most obvious example on the architecture side is the Toronto-Dominion Centre – which has grown to include the six skyscrapers in downtown Toronto that serve as the Bank's global headquarters. The Centre, which includes TD Bank Tower, was designed by the internationally renowned architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It is considered one of the finest examples of modernist architecture in the world.
What's more, when it was completed in 1967, The Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower (now the TD Bank Tower) was the tallest building in Canada. The building's now-shuttered 55th floor Observation Gallery became a tourist destination where visitors could enjoy sweeping urban vistas.
Around the same time, financial institutions, including TD, were looking to share gifts with the public for Canada's Centennial in 1967, a year-long celebration to mark the 100th anniversary of Confederation. To celebrate the Centennial, special events and community activities were held across Canada, many of which featured artworks and artifacts.
"The space was extremely crowded for ceremonial and philanthropic-type gestures," Korczynski said. "Government and industry both sought ways to bring something unique and signature to the table. TD had to set out on a path so its gift would be distinctively Canadian, felt like TD, and had some kind of legacy that would endure for a long time.”
The Bank landed on art, specifically art from Inuit communities; a project that resonated deeply with then TD Chief Executive Officer Allan Lambert. The Bank wanted a Centennial project that not only honoured Canada's past but also looked ahead to its future.
Lambert started working at the Bank of Toronto when he was a teenager. After serving in the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II, he took a job as manager of the Bank of Toronto's Yellowknife branch.
At the time, the branch took up one room in a big log cabin with a safe tucked away behind a wrought iron furnace. Lambert also lived in the cabin's back room. It was during his time in Yellowknife that he developed relationships with the people of the community and fell in love with the landscapes of Canada's North, a passion that would colour the rest of his career.
Even after he moved back to Toronto, Lambert was deeply affected by his time near the Arctic. He believed that those living in the south didn't understand those living in the North, or the potential for the northern landscape to feed and inspire Canadians in the next century.
"He also recognized the absence of a definitive Canadian collection of art from Inuit communities, and he saw the potential for the Bank's Centennial gift to Canadians to fill this gap, and further, for it to have a permanent legacy – a cultural investment that would endure for generations," Korczynski said.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Bank’s collection of art from Indigenous communities grew – and toured along the way. To make the collection available to a broader public, temporary exhibitions were organized and sent to Bank branches for special events, such as openings. Items were also loaned to non-profit organizations, museums and galleries.
The TD Inuit Art Collection was formally rededicated as the TD Gallery of Indigenous Art in 2019 to reflect the art pieces held in the Collection from diverse Inuit and Indigenous communities across Canada.
In his curator's statement for the gallery, Keeler, the Bank's Senior Curator wrote: "This is more than a mere name change. This new name reflects the journey and growth of the collection itself and our work to amplify underrepresented and diverse voices in the arts through the TD Ready Commitment. Our direction at TD Art is inspired by timely and current conversations about Truth and Reconciliation, diversity, and equity that help bring us closer to a more inclusive tomorrow."
Keeler and his team live this mission when working with artists from Indigenous communities, especially when they seek to find artists from a specific Canadian or American Indigenous community. Often, it can take years of relationship-building with an artist before TD acquires a piece of their work. The goal, Keeler said, is for the artwork to help spark conversation among those who view it.
"We try to ensure that the artists understand what our strategy is, that they are aligned and support it, and that they know we're not using their work as a tokenistic measure. Rather, they know the team will leverage the works of art as an engagement piece and to open dialogue," Keeler said.
For example, when curating artwork for One Vanderbilt in Manhattan, the site of the Bank's U.S. flagship store and corporate offices, it took Keeler five years of searching to find a piece by an artist from the Lenape community to feature in the building. Keeler was specifically looking for work from an artist from a Lenape community because of the history of the Lenape people in relation to the Manhattan location of the Bank’s flagship office.
In the 1700s, Lenape people were displaced from their traditional territory, Lenapehoking – a huge swath of land on the east coast of the United States that includes current-day New York City. Finally, Keeler developed a relationship with Toronto-based Vanessa Dion Fletcher, a neurodiverse artist from the Lenape and Potawatomi communities.
“When my colleague shared with her that we would be putting the work on traditional Lenape territory, that was a very meaningful, poignant moment for her because it meant that there was a ‘giving back,’ to use her own words,” Keeler said.
In 1985, the collection found a permanent home in the lobby and mezzanine of the IBM Tower, now known as the TD South Tower, located at 79 Wellington St. W. in Toronto.
Bringing an ancient technique to life
Vanessa Dion Fletcher
When TD Stories visits Dion Fletcher's studio, she's just returned from Brazil where she was part of a delegation of Canadian artists visiting the Sao Paolo Museum of Art for an exhibition called “Indigenous Histories.”
A piece of hers was included in the exhibition, which featured work by artists from Indigenous communities in North and South America, Oceania, and Scandinavia.
Back at home, and in her west-end Toronto studio, she gives the TD Stories team a tour and shares details behind some of her art. Dion Fletcher works across disciplines and creates performance, video, and textile art along with sculptures and installations.
"I love using my hands and my body to express myself and to share my ideas," she said.
Lately, she's been using porcupine quills in her work. While growing up, she didn't see a lot of quill work outside of museums, and it wasn't something she learned about in her formal art school training. She came to it later by reflecting on her own community and her family's history.
"Porcupine quills have been used by Indigenous People across Turtle Island, or North America, for hundreds, if not thousands of years," Dion Fletcher said.
That sense of connecting to her history is important for Dion Fletcher. It's one of the reasons she's pleased to have her work in the TD Art Collection where it's displayed in New York City on traditional Lenape territory. "A small part of myself and my family exists in that place," she said.
While she initially had some hesitation about having her artwork included as part of a corporate collection, she's ultimately happy her work has found a home that's meaningful for her and her family.
She also knows TD will take care of her art. "It's important that my work is shown and displayed," she said. "I don't make it just for myself."
In 2024, TD colleagues began to commute to TD Terrace at 160 Front St. – and the TD Art team is filling 32 floors with artwork and archival features, including an immersive museum experience in the public branch at street level.
Notably, that includes art by artists from Indigenous communities, including one important commission for a prominent space in the building – a space Keeler has dubbed “The New 54th floor” for its visual and architectural significance. (The 54th floor in TD Bank Tower is a preserved mid-century modern space with a rotating collection of Canadian art.)
Just as the mission behind the collection has evolved since its early days in the late 1960s, Keeler and his team continue to curate it for a new century. The goal is no longer to tour the collection to far-off locales, like San Francisco. Now, it's about reflecting Indigenous communities through artwork by artists from Indigenous communities, helping to start dialogues, and contribute to important conversations happening coast to coast as Canada grapples with reconciliation.
“The tenets of Truth and Reconciliation guide us to be thoughtful and always learning,” Keeler said. “The TD collection is itself a representation of a period of time, a tool of social impact, and but it's also a learning tool for people of our time – and the next generation.”
The TD collection of art by Indigenous Peoples continues to grow, especially now as the Bank settles into one of its most ambitious real estate projects.
Each piece had to be registered and catalogued for the exhibition, while others first needed repair and restorative attention prior to arriving, so they would be in tip-top shape for their moment in the spotlight.
Each piece had to be registered and catalogued for the exhibition, while others first needed repair and restorative attention prior to arriving, so they would be in tip-top shape for their moment in the spotlight.
"TD treated these objects as Fine Art with a capital ‘F’ and a capital ‘A’