This collection represents some of the men and women who have been part of the history of the University of British Columbia between 1913 and 1966. Since the early 1980s, whether for fear of defacement or other concerns, these portraits left the departments from which they originated to be stored at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. This exhibition is an opportunity to recognize UBC’s history and to find homes for these pictures on campus.

Many of the artists who created these images are major figures in the history of Canadian art. Robert Harris, who painted Professor George E. Robinson in 1913, is known for his 1884 work, Fathers of Confederation. Lilias Torrance Newton, who painted Dean F.H. Soward in 1959, was a member of the Beaver Hall Group in Montreal. John Koerner (Dean Gordon Shrum, 1964), Peter Aspell (Dean Clement, 1949), and Charles Stegeman (Portrait of Dean Daniel Buchanan, 1952) are important painters in the history of Vancouver post-war modernism.

This exhibition is presented as part of Faces, a project of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. Faces is presented in three locations in Vancouver: the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Walter C. Koerner Library and the Satellite Gallery. The exhibition explores the diverse ways faces are represented, looking specifically at how notions of gender, race and class affect our understanding of them—aiming to reveal, in the process, that this uniquely human trait is anything but neutral.

Faces includes drawings, paintings, photographs, sculpture and video from the collections and archives of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, the Canadian Museum of Civilization (Gatineau), and the American Museum of Natural History Library (New York).

This library exhibition is a collaboration of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the Walter C. Koerner Library at the University of British Columbia and is made possible by the generous support of the Audain Foundation. Art in the Library offers new perspectives on contemporary art by presenting art that challenges and questions our current perceptions.