Shawn Hunt
BFA in Visual Art, 2002
“I transferred to UBC to get my BFA because I saw UBC as a rigorous program that focused on conceptual art and theory. Much of my conceptual work as well as my understanding of art and art history comes from my years at UBC.”
MFA Alumna, Olivia Whetung 2018 Recipient of the John Hartman Award
Congratulations to Olivia Whetung who is the 2018 recipient of the John Hartman Award from The MacLaren Art Centre. Olivia Whetung is anishinaabekwe and a member of Curve Lake First Nation. She completed her BFA with a minor in anishinaabemowin at Algoma University, and has a MFA from the University of British Columbia (2016). Whetung’s […]
Professor Catherine M. Soussloff Discusses Foucault on Painting
In Foucault and Painting (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), Professor Catherine M. Soussloff discusses an area of Foucault’s development that has remained largely overlooked: his engagement with painting. Indeed Foucault, we learn, described himself as a painter. In a recent conversation with Professor Kirstin L. Ellsworth (Indiana University), Soussloff sheds light on this largely neglected aspect […]
Ian Wallace
MA in Art History, 1968
Wallace has said that his experience at UBC was enriched by a progressive learning environment, his fellow students, good facilities such as the library, informed and active teachers, and a contemporary cultural program of wide scope.
Alexander Alberro
BA in Art History, 1986;
MA in Art History, 1990
“As an undergraduate, I found the active research agenda of many of my professors contagious.”
Postcard to Moscow
by John O’Brian Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press 2010 In a very smart essay, John O’Brian launches from a postcard in a familiar photograph by Robert Frank (“Hoover Damn, Nevada, 1955”) to a discussion of atomic explosion imagery on American postcards from the Cold War era. Like the other essays in the book, O’Brian’s offering […]
Atomic Postcards: Radioactive Messages from the Cold War
John O’Brian Co-Authored with Jeremy Borsos 2011 Atomic postcards played an important role in disseminating a public image of nuclear power. Presenting small-scale images of test explosions, power plants, fallout shelters, and long-range missiles, the cards were produced for mass audiences in China, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan and link the multilayered […]
Camera Atomica
John O’Brian Black Dog Publishing 2015 “Camera Atomica”, Art Gallery of Ontario, July 8 – November 15, 2015. Curated by John O’Brian with Sophie Hackett. “Photography is indelibly woven into the not-yet-ended history of the nuclear age. The camera was present at the very beginning of this era, documenting the arc from experimentation, via eerie […]
Basket Weavers for the California Curio Trade
Marvin S. Cohodas The peoples of northwestern California’s Lower Klamath River area have long been known for their fine basketry. Two early-twentieth-century weavers of that region, Elizabeth Hickox and her daughter Louise, created especially distinctive baskets that are celebrated today for their elaboration of technique, form, and surface design. Marvin Cohodas now explores the various […]
Ken Lum
MFA in Visual Art, 1985
Lum’s advice for incoming students of the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory is to “remember that the world is a lot bigger, more complex and contradictory than what one learns in AHVA or any other department. Another word of advice is to remember that sometimes form and content appear as opposites.”