I worked with the entire Koerner collection of tin-glaze, but drew much of my emotional response from the Anabaptist ware, which was at the heart of the collection, as Koerner associated his own family’s experience with the Nazis, to the Anabaptist persecutions.  His family fled from what was known then as Czechoslovakia.  I don’t know if he insisted, I think his collection was offered,  it was his heart’s desire to preserve the collection, and his family had the funds to keep it intact. The Collection adds a European dimension to MOA.  His collection was intentionally mainly tin-glaze ware – and covers the arc of the technology from beginning to end.   His family were huge financial contributors to UBC, and in particular to MOA.

Now, David Lambert. His work was a challenging part of the exhibition, and intentionally so. Carol is asking the viewer to consider these works in the context of the time they were made,  and asks us to put down our politically correct glasses.  She wanted to initiate a conversation about  appropriation – which is a hot topic. Lambert’s pieces reveal a lot about how First Nations art was viewed, and how difficult it is for anyone, other than a first nations, to investigate the art form….we are still at the hands-off stage    One wonders, if I mimicked a Staffordshire piece, why am I only accused of being a copyist and not appropriation. Putting these pieces in the show raises those very questions, as have you, and that was the point.

The most distinct ‘Canadian’ art works, on the west coast,  at that time, were indigenous.  Canadian artists were still searching for their own voice.    Lambert wanted to make work that reflected the artworks of the region, and his was the most distinctly west coast ceramic work being made in the 1950s.  Everyone else was doing Leach, or European style modernism.

 His work was actually a tribute to west coast art, and indigenous stories.  At the time it was being made, many people thought these stories and this art was going to die away, and this was his way of preserving it.

So, the display is about  indigenous art, as seen through the ‘white’ lens.

 These works were a very  successful commercial product, and Lambert received his information from the First Nations.  In the 1950s why would he think he had to ask permission, or do copyright – these are 21st C ideas. The attitude was very different then, and they did not see his use of their designs as insulting.

I think it is a another cautionary tale – to remember the context of art works – they reveal the thinking of their time, and show us how  culture evolves.

 If you look closely at the work his application of the slips was quite virtuosic.   I think these pieces  are in exactly the right venue, in the multiversity gallery, because of all the pieces on the show, they have raised the most questions – which was surely the intention, and are neither white or indigenous, but a strange blend of both.

However,  I think there should have been better directions to the multiversity galleries.

Hope that helps

best

d