A screenshot of the Royal BC Museum's Google Art Project offerings
Today, a number of works by Emily Carr, E.J. Hughes, Mungo Martin and other important British Columbia artists were added to the Google Art Project. The additions came courtesy of the Royal BC Museum, the first Western Canadian museum to join the project.
81 works in total were added from the Royal BC Museum collection, including 26 from the museum’s significant Emily Carr holdings. Among the works added were Carr’s Kitwangar Pole (c. 1928), Kispiox Village (1912), and Tanoo, Q.C.I. (1913). Hughes’s Above Okanagan Lake (1960) is also now available on the project. (Carr’s work was first added to the Google Art Project by the Art Gallery of Ontario; the Royal BC Museum’s additions quadruple the number of Carr works available for viewing.)
First Nations artist Mungo Martin, known in part for his skill in carving totem poles and as a former chief carver at the Royal BC Museum, is represented with watercolour on paper works depicting a sclupin, a thunderbird, and a raven and a whale. The museum also added pencil drawings by Charlie George Sr. Xalxidi which tell the Kwakwaka’wakw story of Soogwilis.
Another important BC artifact was added by the Textile Museum of Canada, which also joined the project today. The TMC included a cedar mat from 1880 in its 68 Google Art Project items. The Textile Museum of Canada contribution features textiles from around the globe, such as a Chinese rain cape, a Japanese kimono and an Indonesian hip wrapper. An Ontario quilt of the late 1800s, a Quebec hooked rug from the early 1900s, and an igloo hooked rug created in 1935 in Newfoundland and Labrador are among the Canadian artifacts that the TMC has shared.
