UBC has received a donation of $3 million from alumnus Michael Audain, OC, OBC, one of B.C.’s most ardent champions of the visual arts, to create the Audain Chair in Historical Indigenous Art. The new position within the UBC department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory will focus their study on works from the 18th to early 20th centuries, and lead research on Northwest Coast Indigenous art in the context of Indigenous and global art history.
The scholar chosen to fill this Chair will be able to use the worldwide collection housed at MOA in their research and teaching. This includes the museum’s exceptional collection of art and cultural belongings from the Pacific Northwest Coast, such as the rare ceremonial club collected on the 1778 voyage of explorer Captain James Cook from the Nuu-chah-nulth people of Vancouver Island’s west coast. The club was generously donated to MOA by Mr. Audain in 2012 and is currently on display in MOA’s Elspeth McConnell Gallery of Northwest Coast Masterworks.
Anthony Shelton, MOA Director and Professor of Art History, Visual Art & Theory, says “We are delighted to welcome this scholar to MOA. This position will bring together collections, research projects, communities, and teaching from across UBC, encouraging object-based learning and activating these unique collections in new ways. The Chair holder will contribute to research that will encourage new understandings of Indigenous art, history, and culture.”
Learn more about this gift and the new Audain Chair in Historical Indigenous Art here. To discover more about MOA’s Indigenous works, visit MOA CAT online or join us at MOA to see our collections in person.
MOA acknowledges that it is built on the traditional, ancestral and unceded land of the Musqueam people.