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Use for: Anspayaxw: An Installation For Voice, Image, and Sound

• September 12 – October 26, 2013
• CURATOR: Karen Duffek, Curator of Contemporary Visual Arts & Pacific Northwest Satellite Gallery
• Anspayaxw: an installation for voice, image, and sound is an immersive sound-and-photographic installation for twelve channels of audio diffusion, created in 2010 by Canadian artist John Wynne in collaboration with photographer Denise Hawrysio, linguist Tyler Peterson, and members of the Indigenous Gitxsan community at Anspayaxw (Kispiox, British Columbia).

• September 19 - October 14, 2013 (Great Hall)
• This display featured sever large format black & white portraits by Mohawk/Anishinaabe photographer Stan Williams of members of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside shown to coincide with Speaking to Memory. Curator: Dr. Jill Baird.

• July 24 - September 29, 2013
• July 24 – August 31, 2013 (Satellite Gallery)
• The Pacific Islands occupy a place in the Western imagination as a paradise filled with idyllic beaches and lush, tropical landscapes inhabited by dusky maidens. With historical precedents in the accounts of European explorers, these perceptions were later re-invented and popularized by Hollywood films in the 1920s through the ’50s. Contemporary artists from the Pacific Islands frequently play with and invert such perceptions, and their work provides an alternate, more complex vision of the region. Paradise Lost?: Contemporary Works from the Pacific features works by artists from Fiji, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. Working in video, installation, sculpture, painting, and photography, the artists show the Pacific Islands from an insider’s perspective. Their artworks explore environmental concerns, cultural heritage issues, questions relating to the experience of migration and diaspora, and the intersection of Indigenous belief systems and Western religions. The artists featured are George Nuku, Te Rongo Kirkwood, Greg Semu, Pax Jakupa Jr., Michael Timbin, Tom Deko, Cathy Kata, Shigeyuki Kihara, Ralph Regenvanu, Rosanna Raymond, Moses Jobo, Eric Natuoivi, and David Ambong. Curated by Dr. Carol Mayer (Curator, Africa/Pacific), and organized to coincide with the Pacific Arts Association Symposium at MOA, the exhibition will feature works displayed throughout MOA’s public spaces and at our downtown Satellite Gallery.

• January 8 - March 3, 2013
• This exhibition featured the display of Alan Michelson’s panoramic video installation of the two banks of the Grand River, which divides the Six Nations Reserve from non-Native townships in Ontario. TwoRow II was generously loaned by the National Gallery of Canada. Ottawa. Curator: Karen Duffek.
• Full title: TwoRow II - A four-channel video installation with sound, by Alan Michelson (2005)

• April 5 - September 30, 2013 (Multiversity Galleries)
• Student exhibition: This small exhibit was developed by students as part of ANTH431. It featured two Nuxalk sun masks and their corona and documented how the components were separated in the past and then reunited through this exhibit. This exhibit then traveled to the Seattle Art Museum for display. Curator: Dr. Jennifer Kramer.

• July 14 - September 15, 2012 (Satellite Gallery)
• The Kwakwaka’wakw artist Henry Speck, or Udzi’stalis (1908 – 1971), became a “newly discovered phenomenon” in 1964 when his paintings of masked dancers, coastal creatures, and sea monsters were shown at Vancouver’s New Design Gallery. Chief Speck, from Turnour Island, British Columbia, was a community leader, teacher, and cultural practitioner. By the 1930s he was also becoming known for his modern paintings, rendered in vibrant colours and textures. His work caught the attention of the Austrian artist and theorist, Wolfgang Paalen, and was declared by the Haida artist Bill Reid to be “far beyond anything attempted before in Kwakiutl art.” Experience Henry Speck’s paintings through originals and large-scale projections that refigure his work against a backstory of media images, sound, and film—an installation that evokes the changing contexts of the mythic and the modern in the 20th century. This exhibition is made possible with support from the Michael O’Brian Family Foundation, and is organized by the UBC Museum of Anthropology and Satellite Gallery. The exhibition was curated by Karen Duffek, MOA Curator of Contemporary Visual Arts & Pacific Northwest; and Marcia Crosby, writer, scholar, and PhD candidate, UBC Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory. Media by Skooker Broome, Manager, Design/Production, MOA.

• October 4 - December 16, 2012 (The Audain Gallery)
• Bursts of bright light danced across the royal courts, ceremonies, processions and battlefields of pre-Columbian Peru. Reflected by the gold and silver of crowns, jewelry, regalia, costumes and banners, such luminosity proclaimed the divine power and authority of Andean priests and rulers for nearly 2,500 years. Despite the 16th century Spanish Conquest, the importance of the reflective properties, and divine qualities traditionally associated with gold and silver, were not forgotten. New techniques were developed to satisfy the novel demands of the Catholic Church and colonial elite. Later, Peruvian Independence inaugurated a revival of the indigenous use of silver, and the introduction of a new style of silverware celebrating the country’s distinct flora and fauna. Luminescence: the Silver of Peru traces the long history of silverwork and the fascination with the metal’s divine and luminescent qualities. It will display pre-Columbian works to those made by contemporary artists, including national treasures seldom seen outside of Peru. The exhibition is curated by MOA Director Dr. Anthony Shelton, and made possible through the generous support of the Pan American Silver Corp. and the Patronato Plata del Peru.

Use for: Forest One by annie ross, annie ross: Forest One

• March 20 - May 27, 2012 (The Great Hall)
• The Great Hall: gallery, performance space, parking lot. Yes, parking lot! For about two months this spring, annie ross’ amazing Forest One – a full-size, 1956 Nash Metropolitan automobile that the artist has wrapped, twined, and plaited with cedar-bark and other reclaimed materials –will be displayed here, in all its woven glory. Using bark salvaged from clear-cut urban forests, Ross, a weaver and Assistant Professor in First Nations Studies at Simon Fraser University, completely transformed the car inside and out. Forest One speaks of colonization, urban sprawl, trash, and remediating the urban landscape through acts of salvage.

• June 19–September 25, 2011 (The Audain Gallery)
• Student exhibition: A sculpture is more than carved stone and a print is more than coloured paper. Many people have played a role in the life of a work of art: from the artist, to the dealers, collectors, purchasers, auctioneers, and curators. Through their connections and points of contact, these people create the Inuit Art Market. How does Inuit art move through the art market? How is authenticity determined? Who decides what is valued? This exhibit, curated by UBC students, invites you to explore these questions and discover the many faces and voices of the Inuit art market. (This exhibit is shown in conjunction with Inuit Prints: Japanese Inspiration - James Houston, Un’ichi Hiratsuka and the Inuit Print Tradition, also shown in The Audain Gallery.)

• March 17 - September 3, 2012 (The Audain Gallery)
• CURATOR: Dr. Jennifer Kramer; MOA Curator, Pacific Northwest, and Associate Professor of Anthropology at UBC
• 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 book, which is available in the MOA Shop.

Use for: Hiroshima , Hiroshima [Ishiuchi Miyako]

• October 14, 2011 - February 12, 2012
• This exhibition features an installation of 48 photographs by Ishiuchi Miyako of clothing and accessories left behind by victims of the 1945 atomic bomb at Hiroshima. Unlike the black-and-white images of devastated landscapes often associated with the bombing, Ishiuchi’s colour photographs capture her own moments of encounter with everyday objects that are now preserved at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Testaments to a profound trauma, her images at once illuminate the beauty and complexity of individual lives, and the weight of collective history. Born in 1947 in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, Ishiuchi began her artistic career in the late 1970s and is now one of that country’s leading contemporary photographers. This is the first exhibition of Ishiuchi’s ひろしま hiroshima series outside Japan. For a list of related programming, please visit www.moa.ubc.ca/events. Exhibition sponsored in part by Shiseido and the Japan Foundation. Media sponsor The Georgia Straight.
• A note about the artist's name and the exhibition title: The artist is referred to as Ishiuchi Miyako, or Ishiuchi (not Miyako Ishiuchi or Miyako). ひろしま means Hiroshima, written in Japanese hiragana characters. Hiragana is one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana. These characters were extensively used by women in former times; for Ishiuchi, using this style for the title emphasizes that this series is made from the point of view and feelings of a woman. It is the artist’s wish that that the hiragana appears before the word ‘hiroshima’ as part of MOA’s exhibition title, and that the ‘h’ in Hiroshima not be capitalized.

• James Houston, Un’ichi Hiratsuka and the Inuit Print Tradition
• 19 June - 25 September, 2011 (The Audain Gallery)
• This exhibition features exquisite and extraordinarily rare prints from Japan and Cape Dorset, Nunavut, from the late 1950s and early 1960s. It also tells the little-known story of how, fifty years ago, the Canadian artist and “discoverer” of Inuit art, James Houston, travelled to Japan to study printmaking with Un’ichi Hiratsuka. An esteemed Japanese printmaker, teacher and champion of Japan’s “Creative Print” Movement (sōsaku hanga), Hiratsuka taught Houston a variety of direct transfer print techniques. With Japanese prints and tools in hand, Houston returned to the Canadian Arctic and resumed work alongside the five original Inuit printmakers — Osuitok Ipeelee, Iyola Kingwatsiak, Lukta Qiatsuk, Kananginak Pootoogook and Eegyvudluk Pootoogook. Their studio produced its first annual collection and released it to the public in January 1960. Since then, art collectors around the world have been continually surprised by Cape Dorset’s fresh, imaginative and original artworks on paper. It is an incomparable artistic legacy in Canada. Inuit Prints: James Houston, Un’ichi Hiratsuka and the Inuit Print Tradition is the first systematic inquiry into the Japanese influences on the early years of the Cape Dorset print studio. By juxtaposing the earliest Cape Dorset prints with the actual Japanese prints that inspired the Inuit printmakers in 1959, the exhibition examines the many ways in which the Cape Dorset artists creatively “localized” Japanese influences. This exhibition tells a much different story than is commonly associated with Inuit art, which is a romantic story about faraway people living in an enclaved, remote world. The complex connectivity that unites Japanese and Inuit printmakers through the intermediary work of James Houston is a story about globalization, cultural translation, travel and modernity — characteristics that define our present age. Exhibition organized by the Canadian Museum of Civilization with the assistance of the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative in Cape Dorset.

• April 20 – July 3, 2011 (Satellite Gallery, 560 Seymour)
• Through singing drums, family heirlooms, a talking basket, and cups of tea, artist Peter Morin sets the idea of the museum on the kitchen table. Peter Morin’s Museum weaves together familiar practices of museum display with a series of performances and an evolving installation to create a space in which to share Tahltan knowledge. As elements of the “museum” change and transform over time, visitors are invited to reflect on history, objects, and places of connection. Peter Morin, of the Tahltan Nation of northern British Columbia, is a Victoria-based performance artist. His ideas about museums and their transformation through indigenous ways of knowing began in his cousin’s cabin, where visits with friends, relatives, and elders offered him a gradual understanding of Tahltan history and means of sharing it with one another. For this exhibition, Peter locates the table—the place of gathering, of Tahltan sovereignty, of his grandmothers’ knowledge—within the space of an urban gallery. There are objects in cases and on the walls: family photos, precious tools, images of Tahltan territory, video, and drums painted with the songs they have sung. Just as visual access to these elements will change through their wrapping and unwrapping over the course of the exhibition, so too will visitors’ relationships to the work as the artist reveals his stories.

• April 7 - May 29, 2011 (The Audain Gallery)
• Carl Beam (1943-2005) was born in M’Chigeeng (West Bay) on Manitoulin Island. Of Ojibway heritage, the artist has exerted a strong influence on a whole generation of Aboriginal artists and has been instrumental in the development of the art of Canada’s First Nations. He is renowned for his powerful combinations of highly charged images from his personal Anishinaabe aesthetic, which is more akin to the expressive layering of Rauschenberg than the traditional forms of Anishinabek “Woodland School” painters. The exhibition, curated by Greg Hill, and organized by the National Gallery of Canada, features a selection of 50 of Beam’s most remarkable works spanning his 30-year career, from his monumental-scale paintings and constructions, to his ceramics and video.

• November 27, 2010 - January 23, 2011 (Satellite Gallery)
• No Windows, on view at Satellite Gallery from November 27, 2010 to January 23, 2011, is the result of a unique collaboration between the departments of Anthropology, Art History and Curatorial Studies at the University of British Columbia, as graduate students in each of these programs have joined forces to curate this new and exciting exhibition. No Windows presents artworks by local and national artists Rhonda Weppler + Trevor Mahovsky, Adad Hannah, Jamie Drouin, and Zoe Tissandier. In their work, the artists explore the structures that underlie gallery and museum practices, and challenge visitors' ideas about them as agents in the creation, mediation, and reception of art.

• 29 October, 2010 - January 23, 2011
• Man Ray, African Art, and the Modernist Lens brings to light photographs of African objects by American artist Man Ray (1890-1976) produced over a period of almost twenty years. In addition to providing fresh insight into Man Ray’s photographic practice, the exhibition raises questions concerning the representation, reception, and perception of African art as mediated by the camera lens. Curated by Wendy Grossman, the exhibition frames the objects and images within diverse contexts, including the Harlem Renaissance, Surrealism, and the worlds of high fashion and popular culture.

• From the exhibition, Jamelie Hassan: At the Far Edge of Words, at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
• June 18 – August 22, 2010 (Multiversity Galleries)
• Vitrine 448, a 'book work' created by renowned Canadian artist Jamelie Hassan in 1988, was shown at MOA as part of an exhibition organized by the UBC Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Curatorial liaison: Karen Duffek.

• (after The Raven and the First Men by Bill Reid, 1980)
• March 12 - December 31, 2010 (on patio adjacent to Bill Reid Rotunda)
• Nicholas Galanin (b. 1979) is an artist of Tlingit ancestry who lives and works in Sitka, Alaska. Trained through apprenticeship and formal study in wood carving, metalwork, and tool making, he uses a range of media, including sculpture and video, to expand his own practice and investigate how “Northwest Coast art” is situated in relation to cultural values, contemporary issues, and global art worlds. His new work, Raven and the First Immigrant, is on display on the patio just outside the Bill Reid Rotunda, directly facing Reid's iconic sculpture, The Raven and the First Men.

• March 3 - September 30, 2009 (Lobby)
• This magnificent panel by Coast Salish artist John Marston was accompanied by excerpts from “Killer Whale and Crocodile,” a documentary about John’s journey to Papua New Guinea, where he met and was inspired by Sepik carver Teddy Balangu to carve this work. Curatorial liaison Carol Mayer, Curator, Africa/Pacific.

• February 6-11, 2007 (Museum Lobby)
• Dominic Benhura is an acclaimed Zimbabwean artist credited for his contributions in transforming Shona stone sculpture into a world-class modern art. The sculptures shown here attest to his ability to portray human feeling through form and movement rather than facial expression.