A unique collection spanning two hundred years of British Columbia's remarkable visual art.

Art is a window into culture and history, and there is no collection that portrays the astonishing breadth of British Columbia's art from the early nineteenth century to the present as superbly as the one at the Audain Art Museum in Whistler. This beautiful book brings together in a single volume many highlights from the museum's permanent galleries.

Among the early works are exquisitely produced First Nations masks, many of them repatriated to British Columbia from collections around the world. Also of significant interest are a wide selection of works by Emily Carr and E.J. Hughes that span their entire careers, as well as some of the most vivid depictions of the regional landscape by Frederick Varley and William Weston. Stunning examples of modernism by Lawren Harris and B.C. Binning presage images by innovative practitioners such as Jack Shadbolt, Toni Onley, Gordon Smith and Claude Breeze. And most familiar to contemporary audiences are innovative works by photo-conceptual artists such as Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham, Ken Lum and Stephen Waddell and career-defining contemporary art by First Nations artists such as Bill Reid, Robert Davidson, Beau Dick, Brian Jungen, Sonny Assu and Marianne Nicolson.

Interviews with John and Patricia Patkau, the award-winning architects of the building, and art collector and philanthropist Michael Audain set the works in context. This is the definitive guide not only to the museum but to the history of art in British Columbia.

Ian M. Thom is a Senior Curator-Historical at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Involved in Canadian art museums for more than thirty years, he has also held senior curatorial positions at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. He has organized more than one hundred exhibitions and written numerous articles and authored or co-authored many books, including Robert Davidson: Eagle of the Dawn, Andy Warhol: Images, Art BC, E.J. Hughes, Takao Tanabe, B.C. Binning, Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon and Challenging Traditions: Contemporary First Nations Art of the Northwest Coast. He lives in Vancouver, BC.

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