The Collection

Over the past two decades Vancouver has become internationally renowned for contemporary photo-based work, particularly the “Vancouver School” of photoconceptualism that includes artists Roy Arden, Stan Douglas, Rodney Graham, Ken Lum, Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace and others. The Vancouver Art Gallery’s permanent collection is exceptionally strong in this area and continues to build on this strength, particularly in the international realm. The Gallery now has one of the most significant international photo-based collections in North America, which includes local artists as well as Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Cindy Sherman and Thomas Struth among others.

The collection reflects the history and lineage of local production within a global context. To this end the collection incorporates significant international conceptual bodies of work such as those by American artists Dan Graham and Robert Smithson from the 1970s and is the repository for the Lawrence Weiner Archive. From the N.E. Thing Co., whose works are representative of a seminal moment of art production in Vancouver in the 1960s and 70s, setting the stage for this city’s artistic reputation, to recent works by emerging artists, the Gallery seeks to build a collection that participates in a significant international dialogue on photography and its conceptual and material possibilities.

The Gallery has a long history of exploring and presenting the visual art of Asia. In October 2014 the Gallery announced the creation of the Institute of Asian Art, a major initiative that includes a commitment to strengthening the Gallery’s collections of contemporary art from Asia. Working strategically to build a collection of key works by major artists, the Gallery now has several important works including Eikoh Hosoe’s photographic suite Ordeal by Roses (1961–62), Mariko Mori’s Play with Me (1994); Rise and Fall (2009), a commissioned video installation by Fiona Tan; and Jin-me Yoon’s A Group of Sixty-Seven (1996). Recent acquisitions by Chinese artists include works by Wang Du, Wang Jianwei, Yang Fudong, O Zhang and Zhu Jinshi.

Following the 2010 presentation of Waste Not by Song Dong, the Gallery purchased a major work by this Beijing-based artist called Fill in the Sea, comprised of 168 colour photographs created to mark the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China. We are also grateful to the Shanghai and Beijing-based art collective MadeIn Company who generously donated their work Calm (2013) in 2013, and to the renowned Indian artist Reena Saini Kallat for donating her work Woven Chronicle in 2015. Both works were previously featured in the Gallery’s Offsite location.

The Gallery’s small but important grouping of historical First Nations work includes model poles, masks, frontlets, feast dishes and hats that allow us to tell the story of the earliest art of this region. The Gallery’s collection was significantly enriched in 2015 by a bequest from the Estate of George Gund III of 37 historical and contemporary First Nations objects. The Gund bequest includes historical works by Haida, Heiltsuk, Kwakwaka’wakw, Nisga’a, Nuu-chah-nulth, Tlingit and Alaskan artists, as well as important contemporary works by Francis Horne Sr., Ken Mowatt, Norman Tait, Bill Reid and Robert Davidson.

The historical collection provides a fundamental context for the Gallery’s holdings of work by prominent contemporary First Nations artists who work within their tradition, including Dempsey Bob, Joe David, Reg Davidson, Robert Davidson, Beau Dick, Tony Hunt Jr., Bill Reid, Isabel Rorick, Art Thompson and others. The Gallery also actively collects contemporary work by artists who work experimentally and conceptually to explore Indigenous identity in innovative and unexpected ways, such as Sonny Assu, Rebecca Belmore, Raymond Boisjoly, Dana Claxton, Brian Jungen, Marianne Nicolson and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun.