Michael Audain and Yoshiko Kurosawa are two of Canada's best-known art patrons: their donations are held not only by many private corporations but by many museums and galleries, including the National Gallery of Canada, and Vancouver Art Gallery. The collection contains works by a range of North America's most acclaimed artists, including Diego Rivera, Emily Carr and Brian Jungen. This is the first public exhibition of the privately held works in this collection. FEATURED WORKS Mid-nineteenth-century masks by Haida, Nuxalk, Salish, Tlingit and Tsimshian Contemporary works by such First Nations artists as Robert Davidson, Reg Davidson, Beau Dick, Richard Hunt, Brian Jungen, Marianne Nicolson and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Paintings by Emily Carr, B.C. Binning and E.J. Hughes, and contemporary works by Roy Arden, Gathie Falk, Rodney Graham, Angela Grossman, Ken Lum, Takao Tanabe and Etienne Zack. Mexican modernist works by Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo and others.

Known for her expansive multidisciplinary approach to art making Vancouver-based Dana Claxton, who is Hunkpapa Lakota (Sioux), has investigated notions of Indigenous identity, beauty, gender and the body, as well as broader social and political issues through a practice which encompasses photography, film, video and performance. Rooted in contemporary art strategies, her practice critiques the representations of Indigenous people that circulate in art, literature and popular culture in general. In doing so, Claxton regularly combines Lakota traditions with “Western” influences, using a powerful and emotive “mix, meld and mash” approach to address the oppressive legacies of colonialism and to articulate Indigenous world views, histories and spirituality. This timely catalogue will be the first monograph to examine the full breadth and scope of Claxton’s practice. It will be extensively illustrated and will include essays by Claxton’s colleague Jaleh Mansoor, Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory at the University of British Columbia; Monika Kin Gagnon, Professor in the Communications Department at Concordia University, who has followed Claxton’s work for 25 years; Olivia Michiko Gagnon, a New York–based scholar and doctoral student in Performance Studies; and Grant Arnold, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.