Curator & Collector

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 of Anthropology. This sculpture is, of course, depicted in the lower left of the Canadian $20 reverse. (By the way, I was also fortunate to see there the small gold pieces that were previously stolen, and then recovered for the museum.) This particular sculpture retells in three-dimensional form the Haida creation myth, depicting the moment when the clamshell containing the first humans began to open as curious Raven looked on. The sculpture is a few metres tall, and was worked on by Reid in a team with other Haida artisans. It was unveiled by Prince Charles in 1980.

The first version of this sculpture is also present in the Rotunda: the miniature boxwood version that is only a couple of inches high:

An onyx version also exists in the Bill Reid Art Gallery of Northwest Coast Art.

One of the things impressed on me during a recent tour of the Hornby Street gallery was the tremendous differences in scale that Bill Reid worked in, this particular sculpture being perhaps the best example of his creativity in this regard.

I like The Raven and the First Men, and particularly this large sculpture in the Museum of Anthropology, very much. The charming and playful curiosity of the Raven reminds me of the improvising God of the J document behind Genesis 2:4bff. The human bodies in this sculpture are depicted lovingly and wonderfully, with the care and attention of a consummate artist.

(For further links, text, and pictures, see the previous post.)