Beginning August 31 and running until November 15, 2007, the University of Victoria's Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery invites art lovers everywhere to visit The Hold of Our Hands: Art from the Robin and Sylvia Skelton Collection. Profiling donations made to the University of Victoria art collection by the late poet, academic, and artist Robin Skelton and his wife, calligrapher Sylvia Skelton, this is a survey exhibition of over eighty paintings and prints by West Coast and Irish artists, including a significant collection of prints by Irish artist Jack. B. Yeats. It will be on view in the Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery, which is located in the University Centre building at the University of Victoria. Opening hours are from 10 am to 4 pm, Monday through Friday, with occasional evening and weekend openings in conjunction with Farquhar Auditorium events. Admission is free.

The Hold of Our Hands is one of many events this fall that are part of The Malahat at Forty: A Celebration of Robin Skelton, which marks the tenth anniversary of Skelton's passing and the fortieth anniversary of The Malahat Review, the literary journal which Skelton helped create in 1967.

Known internationally as a poet, editor, and publisher, Robin Skelton was born in England in 1925 and joined the faculty of the University of Victoria in 1963. Key to establishing the Department of Writing, Special Collections at McPherson Library, and The Malahat Review, he published over one hundred books of poetry, fiction, criticism, history, and on witchcraft, was a renowned collector of art, and a collagist. When he died in 1997, he left the world a legacy of cultural excitement still relevant today.

For more information about this exhibition, contact the Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery at (250)721-6562, or email curator@uvic.ca.