Exhibits

Current Exhibits

Kesu'

The Art and Life of Doug Cranmer

March 17-September 3, 2012, The Audain Gallery, MOA. Opening reception, Friday, March 16, 7 pm (free; everyone welcome)

Northwest Coast Kwakwaka’wakw art is renowned for its flamboyant, energetic, and colorful carving and painting. Among the leading practitioners was Doug Cranmer (1927-2006), whose style was understated, elegant, and fresh, and whose work quickly found an international following in the 1960s. He was an early player in the global commercial art market, and one of the first Native artists in BC to own his own gallery. A long-time teacher, he inspired generations of young Native artists in his home village of Alert Bay and beyond.

The exhibit shows a wide range of Doug’s artistic works in two and three dimensions in wood and paint, from totem poles, a canoe, masks, bentwood boxes, bowls, and prints, to his important “Abstract series” of paintings on mahogany plywood. Works and words by his students are also included in the exhibit, which is organized as a series of overlapping modules that reflect different aspects of the artist’s life and work.

Dr. Jennifer Kramer, MOA Curator, Pacific Northwest, and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UBC, curated the exhibit, and authored the accompanying catalogue, which is available in the MOA Shop.

Photo Credit:Painting by Doug Cranmer, RBCM 16635 Untitled 9 (Canoe)

A Green Dress

Objects, Memory, and the Museum

September 27, 2011—April 8, 2012, The O’Brian Gallery, MOA

Do objects remember? Or are they wrapped in the memories we bring to them, like layers of stories folded around a picture, a voice, or a worn-out shoe? In this exhibit, created to complement ひろしま hiroshima by Ishiuchi Miyako, opening in The Audain Gallery on October 13, visitors are invited to experience selected objects and media from MOA’s worldwide collection. Some are ancient, some are new. Some are inscribed with their histories, while others are uprooted – their origins, makers, and journeys erased or forgotten. Some, like the green dress of the title, speak to memories and relationships not contained by the Museum but still part of living communities. Please join us for this intimate, yet revealing, look at the collections, curated by Karen Duffek, Krisztina Laszlo, Carol Mayer, and Susan Rowley.

Photo Credit:(detail) Dress from Erromango, Vanuatu, loaned by Carol Mayer, Marcela Huerta photo.

Michael Morris Palomar (1969/2012) Photograph by Kari Kleinmann

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At Satellite Gallery - Palomar: MIchael Morris

Jan 25—Mar 3, 2012, Satellite Gallery, 560 Seymour Street, Vancouver (Opening Reception: Sat Feb 4, 6pm-9pm)

Michael Morris has been a key figure of the west coast art scene since the 1960s, and his contribution to the development of Vancouver as an important city for contemporary art has been immense. Satellite Gallery presents Palomar: Michael Morris, an exhibition of work by Morris that complements his larger exhibition at the Morris & Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry.

The exhibition at Satellite Gallery includes three of five recently refabricated editions of Palomar, a sculpture that was originally part of the important 1968 exhibition Younger Vancouver Sculptors curated by Alvin Balkind and presented at the UBC Fine Arts Gallery (now the Belkin Art Gallery). This work, each in a different colour, is a three-dimensional version of a silkscreen print inspired by the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County. Palomar represents a rare example of sculpture by Morris and will be accompanied in this exhibition by the original Palomar silkscreen.

Michael Morris is one of the most important artists of Vancouver’s contemporary scene. He has participated in artist-in-residence programs both in Canada at the Banff Centre (1990) and at Open Studio (2003) and internationally at Berliner Künstlerprogramm (1981-1998). He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities in 2005 by Emily Carr University of Art + Design. In 2011, he received Canada's prestigious Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. Morris currently lives and works in Victoria.

Palomar: Michael Morris is a co-presentation of Presentation House Gallery and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. For more information, please visit http://www.satellitegallery.ca/

This project is made possible with the generous support of the Audain Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Vancouver Foundation, and the British Columbia Arts Council. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Michael O'Brian Family Foundation and our Belkin Curator’s Forum members.

Satellite Gallery is a Michael O'Brian Family Foundation project with partners the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, and Presentation House Gallery.