Michael Audain’s fascination with Indigenous art dates to childhood. After attending Saturday lectures on natural history at the Royal B.C. Museum, he would wander around the galleries, awestruck at the northwest coast Indigenous art on display.
The museum’s director, Dr. Clifford Carl, spotted his interest, and encouraged it.
“He opened up one of the display cases,” Audain recalls. “He asked me to put on some white gloves and showed me some of the masks. I didn’t know that much about them, but the images just attracted me, and that stayed with me for many years. Even before I started collecting the stuff myself, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”
Seven decades later, Audain is one of the world’s premier collectors of northwest coast art, and one of Canada’s leading philanthropists. The two passions come together in the Audain Foundation’s latest donation, $3 million to fund an Audain Chair in Historical Indigenous Art at the University of B.C.
Source: – Vancouver Sun
