Curator & Collector

Official First Day Terry Fox Coin I recently learned that when a museum accessions a piece, it gives it a number, for example, 2003.4.3.2. The 2003 would refer to the year that a piece was acquired by the museum, the 4 would indicate that this was the fourth accession of that year, while the next [...]

The Sun; Royal Canadian Mint limited edition one dollar coin for the 2010 Winter Olympics; designed by Xwa lack tun [Corrected] The recent 2010 Winter Olympics came during a time of profound personal upheaval which the artistic events of the Games had a part in healing. To commemorate the Games, I purchased from the Royal [...]

Thunderbird on a Royal Canadian Mint bullion coin In preparation for the recent Winter Olympics, the Royal Canadian Mint released a number of commemorative coins, three of which were $5 silver bullion coins (often known, after the “normal” reverse design, as “Silver Maple Leaf” coins–or “SMLs”). I particularly liked this one, which depicts on its [...]

UPDATE: The contest is now over; thanks to all who voted for me. I took down the embedded links below because the scripts in them seemed to be causing the blog to load slowly. – ORIGINAL POST: Note: this is a more informal post than is usual for this blog. I’ve entered a wacky contest [...]

Obverse of the famous $1 million gold coin produced by the Royal Canadian Mint One of the most popular exhibits at the recent 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver was the Royal Canadian Mint Pavilion, which housed, in addition to the medals shown in the preceding post, the largest traveling coin in the world. I had [...]

2010 Winter Olympics Medal co-designed by Corrine Hunt As mentioned in the preceding post, I and several thousand other people lined up recently to see and touch the gold, silver, and bronze medals for the 2010 Winter Olympics. I’m not particularly a sports person, but partly because these medals were reputed to be so British [...]

Corrine Hunt, co-designer of the 2010 Winter Olympics medals Today my wife and I went back to the Aboriginal Artisans’ Village, an event held during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Today, we met the 2010 Winter Olympic medals co-designer Corrine Hunt, who was selling her jewelry at the event. This brief meeting near the [...]

Image of the Jody Broomfield-designed $3 coin, “Return of the Tyee” Jody Broomfield, whom I met last week at the Aboriginal Artisans’ Village during the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, was the one who created this beautiful design celebrating the return of the Tyee, or black salmon. This silver proof $3 coin was produced by Canada’s [...]

Bill Reid’s Mythic Messengers This is the sixth post in my series–inspired by Hilary Stewart’s book Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast–on the isolated forms of aboriginal northwest coast art. Each of the five previous posts has focused on the lines, shapes, or spaces used in the First Nations art of the Northwest [...]

Bill Reid’s sculpture “The Raven and the First Men,” yellow cedar version in the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology A couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate to visit again Bill Reid’s wonderful sculpture The Raven and the First Men on the official reopening day of the Bill Reid Rotunda in the Museum [...]