First Nations Art: European Perspectives
April 24, 2005 to November 30, 2006
In the exhibition First Nations Art: European Perspectives, curator Judith Nasby examined how collecting native arts has been influenced by the artist’s personal vision, tourism, economics, and world promotion. The exhibition featured examples of traditional women’s art in quill and bead work, birch bark biting (Wigwas) and basketry, as well as works by widely recognized artists including: Norval Morrisseau, Anishnabe; Alex Janvier, Chipewyan; Bill Reid, Haida; Stan Hill, Iroquois and Robert “Skip” Saunders, Nuxalk-Bella Coola.
The exhibition looked at the post-contact period when explorers, early tourists and collectors, and artists travelled to observe native peoples in their historical camps and to collect their material culture for ethnographical collections, in the belief that they were preserving dying cultures. Included were paintings and maps with vignettes of native life and prints depicting erroneous information and views considered exotic by Europeans. In the late nineteenth century, tourism influenced the collecting of native arts that in turn supported artists, created income for communities, and in many cases, helped propel artistic ambition to greater heights.
On Tuesday, February 7 at 9:00 a.m., the Art Centre hosted a Gallery Talk by Antiques Roadshow appraiser Don Ellis of the Donald Ellis Gallery (Dundas) on 18th and 19th century Native American art, followed by a coffee reception.
Images:
Top:
Robert "Skip" Saunders (Nuxalk - Bella Coola), Raven, 2004
Collection of William Ruddock
Bottom: A selection of works in the exhibition First Nations Art: European
Perspectives, including Frederick Verner’s Ojibway Indian Encampment,
c 1875.