THE TIMES COLONIST

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

8 November 1958

(page 4)

RICHES OF MIND AND EYE ON DISPLAY.

Getting the Utmost Value

for Every Long-Haired Dollar

The National Gallery of Canada is an admirable institution: its officers are charming, able and efficient. It is the eminently trustworthy custodian of a national collection of art which increases annually in size and value. It cannot be held responsible for the awkward geography of Canada, which successfully prevents all but a tiny handful of our rapidly-growing population from seeing the most expensive of these works, which are too old and fragile to be launched into the wild west. What the National Gallery can do, it has always done with a will. It lays out the relatively small sums at its disposal with great perspicacity and thrift, getting the utmost value for every long-haired dollar. In no department is this outlay more profitably directed than in that which arranges for eminent authorities to tour Canada, lecturing on the topics with which their names are most closely associated.

So it happens that men whose names are familiar to all readers of the intellectual and artistic reviews spend a few hours in Victoria after talking their way from coast to coast. Whether you live in Sackville or Saskatoon or Sooke, these men will give you a much-needed injection of new and stimulating ideas.

The presence in our midst for however short a time, of men like Sir Herbert Read and Philip James, Alec Clifton Taylor and James Laver, wakes us up, sharpens our wits, and sets us thinking.

And all this comes to you for nothing if you are a member of the Gallery; if not, you must pay all of two-bits. It is, in a sense, a rebate on your income tax. I could wish that more of our tax dollar went towards the dissemination of ideas, and that less was squandered on obsolescent weapons of war.

I may be eccentric, but it seems clear to me that what is essentially an ideological conflict can only be won by ideas. And we do want to win it, don’t we?

But I digress. The National Gallery, to whom I have paid tribute, is staffed by humans; and humans err. A singular aberration on the part of the fallible human who organizes these invaluable lecture tours is the choice of dates for the Victoria appearances.

Of the two lecturers sent to us this season by the National Gallery, Mr. Laver was scheduled for Halloween Night; Monsieur Georges Duthuit, is promised to us for the evening of Good Friday. Is this not strange?

Considering that many of our inhabitants were occupied last Friday evening in protecting their own outhouses or transporting those belonging to their neighbors, I thought James Laver was lucky to have an intelligent audience, which more than made up in quality what it lacked in quantity.

His talk on “Taste and Fashion” was profound, as one would expect from a man who is Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and biographer of Whistler, Huysmans, Tissot, Fragonard and Wesley. It was also very witty and entertaining, exhibiting another facet of Laver’s many-sided talents: this was the Laver of “Nymph Errant”, sprightly satirist and playwright.

The lecturer was hospitably entertained on the slopes of Mt. Tolmie. Towards midnight, with Lloyd McKenzie presiding at the urns, the conversation turned appropriately to witchcraft and magic.

Laver’s interest in these topics is well indicated by his book on Nostradamus. He knew Aleister Crowley, the English Satanist. His attitude towards the irrational and the supernatural is detached and clinical; he inquires, observes, records.

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