Recent Acquisitions

2014/2015 ACQUISITIONS

From July 2014 to June 2015, the Vancouver Art Gallery acquired 234 artworks through purchase and donation, bringing the total number of works in the collection to 11,617.

The Gallery has consistently demonstrated a strong commitment to British Columbia artists and in 2014/15 purchased many new works, including those by promising local artists Kim Kennedy Austin, Julia Feyrer, Babak Golkar, Una Knox and Dan Starling, all acquired with the assistance of the Audain Emerging Artists Acquisition Fund. The additional purchase of a monumental new oil on canvas painting by emerging local artist Andrew Dadson was made possible by a generous donation from Phil Lind, while donations from Rick Erickson and Tim Kerr helped facilitate the purchase of works by the renowned Haida artist Robert Davidson. The proceeds of the Jean MacMillan Southam Major Art Purchase Fund contributed towards the purchase of Klatsassin (2006) by Stan Douglas, a major video work that relates directly to the history of British Columbia. Additional purchases of work by Myfanwy MacLeod, Evelyn Roth and Ron Terada were made with the Art Acquisition Fund, while the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts matching funds grant program contributed to purchase of large-scale paintings by Vancouver artists Landon Mackenzie and Neil Wedman.

Donations of artwork are essential to the growth of the permanent collection and the Gallery is grateful to all of the donors who contributed to the Gallery’s holdings in the last year. The Gallery was especially thrilled to receive a donation of oil sketches by Group of Seven painter J.E.H.MacDonald from Ephry and Melvin Merkur in December of 2014. This donation substantially bolstered the Gallery’s holdings of historical Canadian art, as did the donation of a major BC landscape painting by E.J. Hughes from H. Richard Whittall and his family, and Michael Audain and Yoshiko Karasawa’s finalization of their Promised Gift of a Sisiutl headdress by a Nuu-chah-nulth artist. Representation of Canada’s First Nations artists was also strengthened by a donation of drawings by the Inuit artists Napachie and Annie Pootoogook from long-time supporters of the Gallery Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft.

The Gallery continued to develop its exceptional collection of photography in the 2014/15 fiscal year through many donations of important historical and contemporary photographs. The Rossy Family Foundation very generously supported the purchase of 33 photographs by Harry Morey Callahan, helping to make the Gallery’s collection the largest of Callahan’s work in Canada and the second largest in the world. Donations of historical photographs by John Vanderpant, Robert Frank, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Alfred Stieglitz and Giorgio Sommer further added to the Gallery’s representation of the history of photography generally, and the gift of an important photograph and original negative of Emily Carr in her Studio (1939) by Harold Mortimer-Lamb marked an important bridge between the two great strengths of the Gallery’s collection: photography and the work of Emily Carr. The Gallery is grateful to Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft, Bill Jeffries and The Vanderpant Collection for these donations. Significant donations of contemporary photographs were also made by Thomas H.Bjarnason, Robert Keziere and Coleen and Howard Nemtin. Most contemporary photography entered the collection this year through donations from the artists themselves: Robert Burley donated fifteen photographs from his The Disappearance of Darkness series; Karin Bubaš donated eight photographs from her Ivy House series; and individual photographic works were donated by Christos Dikeakos, James Nizam and Hong Chun Park. We are particularly grateful to artists who donate their own work to the permanent collection. In addition to the photographers mentioned above, in the last year the Gallery’s collection of contemporary art also greatly benefited from donations made by the following artists: Angela Grossmann, Shelagh Keeley, Keith Langergraber, Landon Mackenzie, Alex Morrison, Evelyn Roth, Kara Uzelman and Lawrence Weiner, who continues to contribute to his poster archive with annual donations to the Gallery.

Ten drawings by the Royal Art Lodge, a group of fabric sculptures by former Royal Art Lodge members Drue Langlois and Michael Dumontier, a stoneware piece by Mona Hatoum as well as a significant print by Ed Rucha were all generously donated by Monty James Cooper. Donald Ellis gifted the complex hide and thread sculpture Constrictor (2010) by Brian Jungen, and Phil Lind donated Ron Terada’s iconic sign Entering City of Vancouver (2002). Other important donors included David Allison and Chris Nicolson, Erica Claus, Kate Clifford, Neil Campbell, Sean B.Murphy, the family of Stanley E. Read, Evann Siebans and Keith Doyle, The Warhol Foundation and a Private Collection in Vancouver.

We are enormously grateful to all of our donors, without whose generosity the growth of Gallery’s permanent collection would not be possible—thank you!