Art history reinterpretation and representation
A View from Here: Re-Imagining the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria Collections
curated by Steven McNeil (Historical, Modern Canadian, and Indigenous Art) and Heng Wu (Asian Art)
On exhibit from April 27, 2024 – April 27, 2029
The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
Reviewed by Christina Johnson-Dean
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Quick question! Where is the largest public art collection in British Columbia?
If you answered Victoria, you are correct! Though the much larger commercial hub of Vancouver would be logical, the smaller capital city, sometimes known as a “backwater,” takes the crown. One of the reasons is the Gallery’s large Asian collection, and as Chief Curator Steven McNeil notes, many of these works are small in size, but their number and beautiful articulation in valuable materials places the Gallery in the lead. One would not be surprised at settlers and descendants supporting arts of traditional British and European styles, which fill the Graham Gallery with Historical Art of the 19th century Salon, Modern Canadian Art from the early 20th century, Mid-century Modern Art and Design (mainly British Columbia), and more recent Modern Art (which now includes contemporary Indigenous artists), but the Asian collection has also been growing since the Gallery’s inception, making a Curator of Asian Arts necessary by 1976 with stunning works that fill the Roger Lee Gallery (curated by Heng Wu).
How do you reconcile these strong and distinct traditions in one exhibition which aims to bring to light the vast collection, so that items do not languish in storage vaults, disappointing donors who want their treasures appreciated or visitors who wish to see works by icons like Emily Carr? Hence, the brilliant idea of a rotating exhibition under one banner, and though there are actually two exhibitions – the traditional “Western” art focused on evolving styles and ideas and the Asian art presented through material and medium – the exhibition encompasses the common goals of supporting and learning about the arts, despite the age, cultures, materials, trends, and tastes. The first thing you see as you enter is Brendan Tang’s Manga Orprolua Version 5.0 and it bridges the two collections. A first glance at the artist’s name and his glazed ceramic object projects Asian classification, but looking more closely, a contemporary multicultural world unfolds. The artist, who was born in Ireland, studied in the USA and Canada, has shown his work abroad, and is now a resident of B.C.
Financial power has long been centered on the mainland, but the quieter government town of Victoria has had many citizens, who volunteered and have been dedicated to establishing and maintaining a public art gallery, though it was a choppy start as Mary Jo Hughes describes in Vision Into Reality with proposals dating back to 1887 when visiting artists Charles and Georgina De L’Aubiniere’s appealed to the government, followed by the Island Arts and Crafts Society (formed in 1909, mounting annual exhibitions), the erratic and visionary artist Emily Carr trying in 1932 to establish the Peoples Gallery in her home, and the 1938 efforts of John and Katherine Maltwood (who eventually donated their collection to the University of Victoria). Finally, in 1945 the kernel of the Little Centre which grew into the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria was begun. Key to its start was the tireless work of visitor Mark Kearley and artist and former Principal of the Victoria School of Art, Ina D.D. Uhthoff, who was instrumental in hiring the capable, personable, and modest Colin Graham, as the first Curator (later allowing himself to be called Director). When board member and department store heiress, Sara Spencer, donated her large home and property on Moss Street in 1951, the gallery had a permanent home, though as the collection has grown and the profession has become more tuned into conservation and archival practices, this space has not been adequate, despite modern additions. Plans to provide a downtown home in the new development on Store Street by Rock Bay are still in the works.
Key to the Gallery’s beginnings and on-going operation have been volunteers and donors – in spades! Hence, the size of the collection with so many donations from citizens and artists who moved here as well as financial support from the Women’s Committee, later called the Volunteer Committee, now known as the Gallery Associates. From the beginning, Colin Graham steered the gallery with the vision of bringing modern art to the city, not to be just a staid repository of art objects of the past. He was a master at courting the support of traditional, avante garde, young, old, creator, viewer, donor, citizens of Canada, the Americas, Europe, the Far East, the Middle East, well, just about everyone! Since many of Victoria’s residents were of British ancestry, it was always a juggle meeting their preferences in contrast to challenging new art trends and directions. That solid base of tradition is represented on the back walls of the Graham Gallery with floor to ceiling works displayed “salon style,” which was the classic British and European way for the art world to show current works to the public. Here, one sees the works of Sophie Pemberton, B.C.’s first professional artist, who won accolades at the Royal Academy in London, the Paris Salon, and the Royal Academy of Arts in Ottawa as well as a waterfall by Lucius O’Brien, the founding President of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and a young Emily Carr, who depicted native fawn lilies for the Catholic Sisters of St. Anne, before veering towards modernism and forests.
Because of Graham’s dream of promoting modern art, there has been a strong educational aspect to the gallery, as well as an openness to art from many cultures and of varying materials, purposes, and modes. Originally from Vancouver, he had gone to Cambridge University and the University of California at Berkeley, then worked in San Francisco (Head of Education at the Legion of Honor) and lectured at the California College of Arts and Crafts and taught courses at the California School of Fine Arts. He was tuned into historic and contemporary artists, which proved valuable as he humbly began his job as “Curator” at the Gallery. He connected with the family of Maud and Eric Brown, the first Director of the National Gallery of Canada (depicted in Pegi Nicol McLeod’s painting) and thus garnered support and bequests from eastern Canada.
Graham soon tapped into the local support of Emily Carr’s legacy and her connections to the Group of Seven and local artists Jack Shadbolt, Max Maynard, and Edythe Hembroff-Schliecher. Hence, the 1926-1927 Kispayaks Village by A.Y. Jackson is seen with other Group of Seven artists as one enters the Graham Gallery. Nearby are Emily Carr works, including Light Sweeping Through (1938-1939).
He also kept in touch with the Vancouver art world (recognizing B.C. Binning, Gordon Smith, Molly Lamb, and Bruno Bobak) and Seattle as well as to artists who had immigrated to Victoria – Margaret Peterson, Jan Zach, Richard Ciccimarra, Herbert Seibner. Maxwell Bates was a founding member and the first president of a collective group of painters, sculptors, and other visual artists based in Victoria called the Limners, whose founding members included Seibner, Ciccimara, Myfanwy Pavelic, Karl Spreitz, Nita Forrest, Elza Mayhew, Robert De Castro, and Robin Skelton. Colin Graham (who was a painter in his little spare time) was also a member as were Walter Dexter, Helga and Jan Grove, Pat Martin-Bates, Leroy Jensen, Nikola Pavelic, Carole Sabiston, Syliva Skelton, and Jack Wilkinson. Bates’s painting The Cocktail Party shows some of the movers and shakers – including Pat Martin-Bates (in white dress and red hat) and Robin Skelton (with beard and spectacles), who both taught at the ever-growing University of Victoria, which strengthened the cultural scene. Molly Privitt, Fleming Jorgenson, and Michael Morris (who wrote about West Coast Modernism in Vision to Reality) added vibrancy to the milieu as did architects Peter Cotton, John Wade, Alan Hodgons, and John Di Castri (who designed Sylvia and Colin Graham’s modern Westcoast home near the University of Victoria). Joe Plaskett painted the Portrait of H. Mortimer-Lamb, mining engineer (and artist) who was a significant donor to the Gallery at that time.
Important to showing Canada, but not part of the vibrant social scene in Victoria were William Kurelak, known for showing Ukrainian immigrants, and E.J. Hughes, a one-time war artist, who quietly painted in the Shawnigan Lake area, depicting stunning landscapes and our array of boats.
Like Emily Carr, who painted in the traditional British watercolour style before coming into her own with moving and emotional paintings of B.C.’s striking forests, printmaker and artist Pat Martin-Bates is a bridge from the modern artists of the 1960s until the present day, artistically and philanthropically active in the her 90s in Victoria’s art world. As the circle of viewing in the Graham Gallery comes around to post-modern and contemporary times, her Angel of the Blue Sky Crying Parallax Tears (1998), catches attention with its aluminum light box using multimedia.
What is most revealing at this “post-modern” point in the exhibition are the groups of people who have been under-represented (Indigenous, BIPOC, Queer, and to a lesser degree women) in earlier periods of the Gallery’s history. Most disturbing was the lack of Indigenous cultures, on whose land the Gallery has always been located. Before, First Nations cultures might only have been seen through the brushwork of a settler; in this section recent works by Indigenous artists impressively hold their place. Part of the impetus for the exhibition was to “re-imagine” the Gallery and to commit to building a public gallery that is truly inclusive. It recognizes that it is “a view from here” now and implies that as time moves on, our views can change. How will our views evolve? Meryl McMaster’s Wingeds Calling of a raven with smaller birds speaks to a journey of discovery with a feeling of protection, whereas Terrance Houle’s Urban Indian (shopping at a modern grocery store wearing traditional clothes) and Hjalmer Wenstob’s Bentwood Box (traditional shape of wood box made of styrofoam) show the interface of traditional modes with modern ways. To partially fill in the lack of earlier Indigenous art, the Gallery anticipates the very welcome news that Ronald Laird Cliff is donating Bill Reid’s sculpture Killer Whale. One of the gaps that may need to be filled is a Curator of Indigenous Art, rather than a grouping under Post-Modern and Contemporary Art. One of the gaps that may need to be filled is a Curator of Indigenous Art, rather than a grouping under Post-Modern and Contemporary Art. How will we define “art” and how will we define groups of work for conservation and exhibition?
As one considers the Asian collection in the adjacent Roger Lee Gallery, the lack of historical Indigenous art as a contrast to what was happening in Asia at the same time period is noticeable. Earlier First Nations, Inuit, and Metis items have mainly been at museums as part of archeology and ethnology, not as mainstream “art.” And hence, there is an absence of early art from earlier periods in Africa, the Americas, Australia, etc. As contemporary awareness grows, we see how many collected items were illegally and insensitively obtained. How has the Asian collection sidestepped these issues? A number of items there date back to Neolithic times (12th-10th B.C.E.) – how were they acquired, what was their path to Victoria? We view them not by trends and styles, but by materials (bronze, ceramics, jade, lacquer, amber, ivory, prints and screens) and purposes (tea pots, snuff bottles, netsuke, room dividers, wall art, ceremonial items, decorative objects etc.).
The Asian collection hails from the Gallery’s inception with Colin Graham’s awareness of Victoria being on the Pacific Rim. Graham connected with the McEwen sisters and by 1957 both their European and Japanese prints had been bequeathed to the Gallery. Through funds from Kathleen Agnew and Graham’s aunt, Alix Goolden, he was able to approach Fort St. antique dealer A.A. Newbury, who was supportive of the Gallery by allowing objects such as the Song Dynasty (960-1279 C.E.) ceramic funerary pillow and a 17th century Late Ming/early Qing ornate jade bi disc to be purchased for a fraction of their value.
However, as former Curator of Asian Art, Barry Till, wrote in Vision to Reality, a big boost to the Asian collection happened when Graham cultivated a friendship with Isabel Pollard. As a graduate student at the University of Victoria, I remember being part of the creation of the Asian Art Society at the gallery, aimed at enhancing that branch of the collection, which grew exponentially with Pollard’s donations of nearly 1,000 works of art as well as funding in 1976 for a new wing – the Fred and Isabel Pollard Gallery.
Graham cultivated friendships with scholars, dealers, and other gallery and museum professionals, and organized two large-scale Asian exhibitions: 3,000 Years of Chinese Art (1963) and Kamakura to Edo (1967) as well as exchanges with the Royal Ontario Museum in the 1970s.
The Asian section opens with the incredible diversity of Ceramic teapots of Yixing, a purple clay from east China, which is breathable but not water absorbent, yet porous enough to retain a tea’s aroma, thus providing a “seasoning.” They were a gift from Roger Lee (after whom this wing of the gallery is named) and Carol Potter Peckham. With his support to the Gallery, Roger Lee wanted to recognize his parents who lived from birth in B.C. and his grandparents who immigrated from China.
The collection of other ceramic items is extensive – many bowls, dishes, storage jars, and even a bean-shaped Cizhou ware funerary pillow from the 13th century C.E. The Chinese were masters of fine clay work, with glazing dating from the 16th-14th centuries B.C.E. Celadon, a gray-green glaze, developed around the 4th century C. E.. Ding ware developed with an object of thin, white porcelain, which was impressed or incised with floral designs under a transparent ivory glaze. Some were capped with a copper rim, a technique called “upside-down firing.”
Due to its hard and durable nature, some of the oldest objects in the collection are of bronze. One of the oldest is a fragment of a mask dating from the 12th-10th century B.C.E. In the 3rd millennium B.C.E. lost-wax casting was used, so complex shapes and detailing were possible. By 1000 B.C.E., piece-mold casting techniques developed and decorative patterns could be directly carved or stamped on the mold; an animal motif called a ‘taotie” was used. By 600 B.C.E., the use of inlay became more common. Objects were utilitarian to ceremonial ranging from implements to adornments. Bronze mirrors were both practical and ceremonial with intricate designs of symbolic meaning. Fascinating are the different shapes for coins – from spade to knife shapes, dating from the 5th-3rd centuries B.C.E. to the recognizable round coins of the 12th century C.E.
Vying for oldest items are the jade figures, often used in funerary practices, so they were probably protected until grave robbers obtained them. Jade is also durable and because many objects were small and made of a precious material, they would have been carefully preserved and passed on.
Part of mortuary customs were orifice plugs for eyes, ears, mouth, anus which may have been believed to be a prevention against decomposition and the escape of the soul. The cicada was often used for the mouth, and transcendence of the mundane as well as continuation and renewal of life may have been sought. Pigs placed in the hands of the deceased could have symbolized affluence for the afterlife. Jade carvings often had symmetry, emphasizing balance, harmony, and order. Clearly, they would have been objects for the rich, noble, and powerful. A Bi-Disc was gifted by an important donor, Brian McElney, who as a lawyer in Hong Kong was able to obtain valuable Chinese objects – jades, bronzes, ceramics, porcelain, and paintings. These were gifted to the Gallery.
Another ancient and valuable material carved for objects was amber (fossilized tree resin) which sometimes trapped animal or plant material. Apparently, the Chinese noticed the similarity of colours (gold to yellow orange) to tigers, so there was the belief that after a tiger died, its soul sank into the earth and transformed into the gemstone of amber. In Chinese “hu po” means “tiger’s soul,” and it was believed to have protective and healing powers. Since amber’s translucency appeared to resemble liquid, it was often used for wine vessels, but the majority of items were smaller items for jewelry, amulets, religious, and decorative artifacts. Flowers, animals, mythical creatures, and religious symbols were easy to carve into amber.
Ivory is a third valuable material that inspired the artistry and craftsmanship of Asians from early times until the 19th century. Now, of course, there are grave concerns about the elephants and other animals from whom the material is sourced. It was soft enough to carve, but also dense and hard so it could withstand time and use. Because of its rarity, it was often a symbol of wealth, power and status and encapsulates the on-going human characteristic to be excessive and display power without concern for others or planet Earth. Often depicted were mythological creatures, legendary figures, and scenes from literature and folklore embodying Confucian virtues of wisdom, harmony, and filial piety – displaying noble ideas, yet missing the full meaning of how the object’s function in a society sits in a world beyond human concerns. The intricate carvings with negative space carved out and open work show sophisticated technical thinking. An example would be the puzzle ball called Ghost Talented Ball which is a series of nested concentric layers, each containing delicate, three-dimensional designs, meticulously crafted with precision and detail. In Japan, ivory was often the material for Netsuke, small toggles used to secure personal belongings to clothing, carved with high detail.
By the 5th century B.C.E., lacquer works with elaborate decorative features emerged. Lacquer had been used since Neolithic times for coating and sealing objects due to its adhesive and protective qualities. The process entails applying multiple layers of refined lacquer (made from the resin of the lacquer tree) on to a base material, usually wood, but also metal or leather. There is a limited range of colour – usually black and red, though sometimes yellow or green was painted on the surface. Sometimes gold, silver, and even mother-of-pearl, would be embedded (in inlayed) as a powder, foil, or wire. As so often is the case in early Asian art, there were a multitude of practical items to serve food or store objects – bowls, plates, trays, boxes, furniture. Often the pieces were decorative with associations to rituals and religious practices. The red colour called Cinnabar was due to the addition of mercury sulfide to the lacquer. A side note is that lacquer is key to kintsugi, the art of repair, seen in an adjacent wing, featuring the work of Naoko Fukumaru in an exhibition called “Beauty of Mending, Kintsugi and Beyond.”
The Gallery’s items, which could be compared to the “Western” section in terms of time and media as well as being inspirational to many artists, are the paintings often on screens and scrolls and prints, especially from Japan. Taking up a full wall is Kano Samaraku’s six-panel screen with peacocks and pine trees. The screen was originally meant for interior space at the Nijo Palace in Kyoto. Screens were one of the oldest forms of furniture, used as room dividers and as “barriers against the wind,” coming from China to Japan in about the 8th c. C.E.
Through numerous patrons the Gallery’s paintings and prints section grew, including the careful ink and brush work of Chinese traditions to Japanese woodblock prints that so influenced modern artists in the west.
Katsushika Hokusai’s Inume Pass in the Province of Kai (1830-1831) and Utagaura Hiroshige’s Three People Walking in the Snow (19th c. C.E.) show the landscape dominant to people, whereas the human angle presides in Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s Bird’s Eye View of a Yoshiwara Brothel and the much later Girl by Yoshida Hiroshu in 1927.
With the budget and size of the current gallery, it had become difficult to adequately show the collection and avoid being just a storehouse. Hence, the wise decision to have a rotating exhibition for the next five years, so that the public can appreciate the depth and breadth of the collection. Meanwhile, the gallery continues to host exhibitions developed elsewhere – at this time Pop Art: From Warhol to Banksy and Kintsuga: the Art of Repair compliment The View from Here. On the first Saturday of January the gallery was inundated with visitors, old and young. Meanwhile my granddaughter and many others have enjoyed art classes, sustaining the long-standing educational aims established in 1951. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is truly making efforts to ‘re-imagine” itself – keeping the threads of learning, collecting, and supporting artists with an open mind to what “art” can mean and its value to us all.
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Christina Johnson-Dean graduated from the University of California, Berkeley (B.A. in History with Art minor) and then trained as a teacher. After three years teaching in public schools, she took her retirement money and travelled around the world, teaching in Thailand and New Zealand, before settling in Victoria. She completed a M.A. in History in Art and served as a teaching assistant as well as creating local art history courses for Continuing Education. Since 1987, she has been teaching in the Greater Victoria School District. Her publications include The Crease Family: A Record of Settlement and Service in British Columbia (1981), “B.C. Women Artists 1885-1920” in British Columbia Women Artists (Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1985) and three titles for Mother Tongue Publishing’s Unheralded Artists of B.C. series: The Life and Art of Ina D.D. Uhthoff (2012), The Life and Art of Edythe Hembroff-Schleicher (2013), and The Life and Art of Mary Filer (2016). In addition, she contributed to Love of the Salish Sea Islands with an article about Gambier Island (2019). [Editor’s Note: Christina Johnson-Dean has recently contributed a retrospective essay of the life and art of Pnina Granirer, and reviewed the work of I.S. MacLaren, Sonja Ahlers, Gary Sim, Robert Amos, and Kathryn Bridge.]
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The British Columbia Review
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Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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