Mouse Woman drawing by Luke J. Parnell
The Beat
A monthly newsletter about the art of
First Nations on Canada’s West Coast
Welcome to the sixteenth issue of The Beat, a free, independent newsletter that brings you up-to-date on the art events of the First Nations on Canada’s Pacific Coast.
We respectfully acknowledge the Coast Salish Peoples, on whose traditional territories we live and work, and all the First Nations of the Pacific coast.
A special word of praise for the young First Nations men and women we saw in the ceremonies and performances of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. And to the gracious and welcoming people at the Four Host Nations Pavilion, the Market Place, the Carving Shed and Haida Gwaii House.
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Do any readers have recommendations for YouTube sites showing the First Nations dance performances at the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games? Send links to the editor, here at The Beat.
During Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics in February, people around the world were intrigued and impressed by what they saw of the rich and distinctive culture and art of the culture of Canada’s First Nations, especially those of the Pacific coast. The Four Host Nations Pavilion drew more than 14,000 visitors each day. The Musqueam First Nation in Vancouver has secured the right to purchase the $3.5 million Four Host Nations Pavilion.
Haida Gwaii House attracted many visitors to its enviable location across from the BC Place sports Stadium in Vancouver. Haida “ambassadors” welcomed visitors and promoted tourism to the Haida Gwaii and other First Nations sites in British Columbia.
Whistler’s beautiful Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre will continue its special programming admission throughout the Paralympic Games in March. http://www.slcc.ca/
Chief Bill Cranmer, Eli Cranmer and Dr. Martin Roth
On February 19 2010, the German State of Saxony and the U’mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay, British Columbia signed a contract of cooperation in Vancouver. Bill Cranmer, Chief of the ‘Namgis First Nation, one of the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations, and the Prime Minister of Saxony, Stanislaw Tillich, and Dr. Martin Roth, director of the Dresden State Art Collections, laid the foundation for planning an exhibition, The Great Potlatch: Gift-Giving Customs and Economies of Plenty, comparing gift-giving customs as a social and economic exchange. Complementary exhibitions will be shown in Dresden and Alert Bay in 2011.
Laid Over to Cover: Photography and Weaving in the Salishan Landscape at Presentation House Gallery in North Vancouver until March 14 2010.http://www.presentationhousegall.com
Also in Presentation House is an exhibition of photographs Skwxwu7mesh Uxwumixw: The Squamish Community: Our People and Places, a collaborative project undertaken by the North Vancouver Museum & Archives and the Squamish Nation. Archival photographs of North Vancouver First Nations’ people have been identified and commented upon by Squamish elders, so that the new captions give increased insight into local people, history and landscapes.
The Art Bank of the Canada Council has announced 61 new acquisitions, chosen from 1,900 submitted works. With holdings of approximately 17,400 works, the Art Bank is the largest collection of contemporary Canadian art in the world. It was created to support the efforts of Canadian visual artists and to provide government offices with the opportunity to rent Canadian art for their offices and public spaces. The Art Bank collection is also open to corporations and private businesses. Among the acquisitions announced are : Sonny Assu of Vancouver’s iDrum for the Hummingbird , Robert Davidson’s print Grizzly Bear, Tom Eneas of Vancouver’s Hawk Moon Panel, and Marianne Nicolson of Victoria’s Baxwana`tsi - the Container for Souls.
The Simon Fraser University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology has opened Continuity and Change: Transformation in BC Archaeology and First Nations Cultures. The museum has chosen objects which display the continuity in design in First Nations cultural objects, made over thousands of years. The visitor can compare traditional work from past centuries to more recent First Nations art in the show.
Curators were SFU graduate student Chris Springer and faculty member Rudy Reimer (Squamish). The objects displayed in the small museum at the SFU campus in Burnaby near Vancouver are nearly all from the SFU Museum’s own collection. Free admission.
For more about the SFU museum see http://www.sfu.museum/ or call 778 782 3325.
The Spring 2010 issue of American Indian Art Magazine has an 8-page article by SFU’s Annie Ross, “L’hen Awtxw: A Squamish Weaving House,” about the revival of traditional Coast Salish weaving among the Squamish nation.
Haida artist Reg Davidson has created a new pole – in Cooperstown New York! The Cooperstown Crier newspaper reports that Davidson’s 30’ pole depicting Beaver, Raven and, at the top, Eagle will be raised on May 29 2010, the Memorial Day weekend in the United States, on the Fenimore Art Museum’s front lawn.
Cooperstown is in northern New York State on the shore of Lake Otsego. Its most famous museum may be the Baseball Hall of Fame, but the Fenimore Museum of Art attracts many visitors as well. The North American Indian Art wing of the museum houses a growing collection of First Nations’ work; its core is a large gift from Eugene and Clare Thaw, including fine work originally from the Northwest coast. Images and information from this collection can be viewed online at: http://www.fenimoreartmuseum.org/files/fenimore/collections/thaw/exhibit1/vexmain1.htm
Thaw Collection, Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, N.Y. Photo John Bigelow Taylor
The Fenimore Art Museum is closed for renovation until April 1 2010.
An exhibition of selected objects from its Thaw Collection has been loaned to the Cleveland Museum of Art to be shown from March 7 to May 30 2010.
A companion exhibition, The American Indian Image: Photographs by Edward S. Curtis and Zig Jackson also runs until May 30. See http://www.clemusart.com/exhibitions/upcomingexhibitions.aspx
The Cleveland Museum is offering programs to the public in connection with the exhibitions, including lectures, on American Indian Photography and Representation, on Sunday April 25.
Neo-Native Drawings and Other Works: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun is being exhibited at Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery from March 19 to May 16, 2010. The show features three decades of drawings extending from 1980 to 2009. In addition, his most recent tree studies (2004 - 2009), as well as ovoid portraits (2002 - 2005), figurative works (1985 to 2009), etchings (1993 - 2009), watercolours (1980 - 1993), and a number of sketchbooks make up the first exhibition to focus on Yuxweluptun's works on paper.
See http://www.contemporaryartgallery.ca
Yuxweluptun is showing work with Haida artist Jim Hart at the Buschlen Mowatt Gallery until March 31 2010.
More about the exhibition is at http://www.buschlenmowatt.com/
American Indian and Western Art, an auction which includes Northwest art, will be held at Cowan’s in Cincinnati OH on March 26 2010. The sale features a work by Kwakwaka’wakw artist Tom Hunt, a large, articulated mask of Sisiutl, dated 1992.
The pre-auction estimate is US$10-15,000. For more information, see http://www.cowanauctions.com/news_view.asp?Id=278
Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas was a guest of Shelagh Rogers on the CBC program The Next Chapter. To hear their thoughtful discussion of his art and illustrated book Red!, go to http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/nextchapter_20100213_27474.mp3
Michael Dangeli and Don McIntyre’s joint exhibition at the Alma Mater Society’s AMS Gallery in the Student Union Building at the University of British Columbia continues until Friday March 5 2010.
Surrey Art Gallery is currently presenting an exhibition of works by Frank Shebageget to April 2010. An exhibition Eagle Transforming: the Prints of Robert Davidson will open April 17 April and run to June 21 2010. For more information, see http://www.surrey.ca
The Native Youth Art Collective’s Drop In Silkscreening Workshops continue on Tuesday evenings 5-9 pm, until March 24 2010. They are held in Vancouver at the Purple Thistle Centre at #260-975 Vernon Drive near Clark Street and Venables Avenue. Youth 13 to 30 years of age are invited to learn and experiment. For more information call Amanda Mitten 604 649 4629.
In Toronto, First Nations artists Meryl McMaster and Luke Parnell are exhibiting at the Ontario College of Art & Design March 4 to 13 2010. Past Now is an exhibition concerned with the life of images. Meryl McMaster and Luke Parnell (Nisga’a) “enter into a dialogue with meaning in visual representations of Aboriginal identity. Their works rupture stereotypes embedded in historical iconography to challenge the legacy of these images.” For more information, see
http://apache.ocad.ca/events_calendar/eventdetail.php?id=2099
This
is the last week at the Royal
British Columbia Museum
in Victoria
for S’abadeb: The Gifts,
an exhibition originating at the Seattle Art Museum, about Coast
Salish art and culture. It closes on March 8 2010. More information
at http://www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/
The Royal British Columbia Museum is planning an expansion and renovation, particularly to its office, archival and storage space. Plans announced in February include the demolition of the Fannin Building and the BC Archives. The collections and archives would be housed in a new 14-storey, two-tower structure behind the present museum building. Presentations on the plans and related zoning changes are displayed on the museum’s third floor from March 7 2010.
Musqueam artist Susan A. Point is exhibiting recent work on paper at the Omega Gallery at 4290 Dunbar Street in Vancouver until March 14 2010. Point has had more than 20 works installed in the city of Vancouver. See http://www.omegagallery.ca/
Peter Morin, a First Nations visual and performance artist in Victoria, is organizing A Memory Talking Stick an exhibition and ceremony to take place in June 2010. This project is a cultural program to “create a contemporary ceremony to create a physical memory of a new set of stories of our continued connection to cultural values and practice”. It is a joint project of Open Space artist-run centre and Surrounded By Cedar Child and Family Services. Anyone interested in creating work can drop in at Open Space at 510 Fort Street in Victoria to meet with Peter any Thursday or Friday, 9 to 5, until June.
The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver is presenting a symposium, Itineraries of Exchange: Cultural Contact in a Global Frame on March 4 to 6 2010. This is the inaugural event in the Global Encounters Initiative, to consider the question: How do societies change in response to contact with other cultures?
The program begins at 3 pm Thursday March 4 with a visit to the exhibition Backstory: Nuuchaanulth Ceremonial Curtains and the Work of Ki-ke-in at the Belkin Art Gallery at UBC, with comments by Shaunee Casavant, Chief Councillor of the Hupacasath Nation and Professor Charlotte Townsend-Gault.
Later that day at the First Nations Longhouse at UBC, at 7:30 pm, a panel Global Indigeneities – Views from Near and Far includes a presentation by Haida curator Nika Collison on “Bartered Skulls”. For more information on the symposium, see http://globalencounters.ubc.ca/symposium
The Aboriginal Achievement Awards will be held in Regina on March 26 2010.
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Comments, news and new subscribers to this free newsletter are welcomed. Please write to: editor@coastalartbeat.ca
Past issues are available at our website http://www.coastalartbeat.ca
Thank you to David Dumaresq, Luke Parnell, Barbara J. Winter, Jill Baird, Harold Alfred, Michael Dangeli, Martine Reid, and many others, for your assistance. The Beat is an independent, not-for-profit project written and published in Vancouver Canada by Ann Cameron. Copyright 2010 Ann Cameron.