Our art history in British Columbia is so subtle that most Canadians, let alone travelers from elsewhere, don't truly appreciate its significance until they're actually standing amid it. Heritage of the Northwest Coast First Nations carving traditions. Emily Carr's life's work over decades of capturing the province's forests and Indigenous communities with a passion that feels so urgent today. She was followed by the Modernists of the post-war period. And a contemporary class of internationally lauded artists is practicing in this province today.

BC art history is not a local footnote on the spine of Canadian art history. It is a notably important and different visual tradition, and seeing it amassed in one location alters your perception of the province itself.

The next step is to put together one of those big narratives about the concrete or what they identify as art history in BC.

Long before European contact and continuing in vital, changing forms today, Northwest Coast Indigenous nations created some of the most sophisticated carving and design traditions on the planet. Masks, totem and house poles, and ceremonial objects have deep layers of meaning, lineage and story that require a serious commitment to grasp.

That led to some of the most important work produced by Canadian painter Emily Carr, whose relationship with the province and its Indigenous communities shifted during her career from relatively documentary-style paintings of villages and totems to swirling, almost metaphysical depictions of the forests she painted later in life. Viewing a longer arc in her work tells a different story than one isolated, famous canvas.

What came after

In the post-war years came E.J. Hughes, Gordon Smith and Jack Shadbolt, who each worked out a singular visual language that reacted to the British Columbia landscape and light. BC has also been home to many contemporary artists of international importance, such as Jeff Wall, Stan Douglas, Rodney Graham, Dana Claxton and Marianne Nicolson, whose work gets placed in the critical world around the earth but is inextricably linked with a place close to home.

What this all means, along with a continuity that extends back through centuries of carving traditions and through work being made today, is why the story of BC art deserves proper tracing rather than finding itself in fragments.

How to observe one in its proper gathering

Instead of allowing it to remain tucked away in private collections or occasionally on display, a couple of institutions in the province have set their goal to bring this history together all in one place.

Free admission to one of the largest collections of BC art anywhere, the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, primarily focuses on historic Northwest Coast masks through Emily Carr's life and work and emerging contemporary artists working today. It is the type of collection that gives you a reason to be slow.

Worth the Visit

If you have lived in or traveled to British Columbia but not immersed yourself in the art this province has given us, you are missing a crucial perspective on the territory. It is worth the afternoon.

This article's author is Mya Natasia. For additional information regarding BC Art please continue browsing our website at audainartmuseum.com.