Scott Watson (Canadian, b. 1950) is Director Emeritus and Research Fellow at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. A curator whose career has spanned more than thirty-five years, Watson is internationally recognized for his research and work in curatorial and exhibition studies, contemporary art and issues, and art theory and criticism. His distinctions include the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2010); the Alvin Balkind Award for Creative Curatorship in BC Arts (2008) and the UBC Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance Development in the Visual and Performing Arts (2005). Watson has published extensively in the areas of contemporary Canadian and international art. His 1990 monograph on Jack Shadbolt earned the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 1991. Recent publications include Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry (2015); Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries (2011), a finalist for the 2012 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize; “Race, Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of the Modern Canadian Landscape” and “Disfigured Nature” (in Beyond Wilderness, McGill University Press, 2007); and “Transmission Difficulties: Vancouver Painting in the 1960s” (in Paint, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006).
The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, UBC, and the Contemporary Art Gallery have collaborated to produce an important group exhibition of contemporary Cuban art, New Art from Cuba: Utopian Territories. The exhibition will be staged at seven Vancouver venues. Besides the Belkin Art Gallery and the CAG, participating art galleries include: the Charles H. Scott Gallery at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, ACCESS, OR Gallery, Artspeak Gallery and Western Front. There are 23 artists participating, 8 of whom are coming to Vancouver to supervise the installation of their work and to celebrate their openings on March 21-22, 1997.
Contemporary Cuban art is undergoing an extraordinary renaissance led by a young generation of artists mostly in their twenties (Cuba is a country with a much larger youth demographic than Canada or the USA). The artists comment on the richness and contradictions of Cuban life, as well as politics and culture, at a time when Cuba is at a crossroads in its history. The work is exuberant and often humorous.
The exhibition has been curated by Cuban curators Eugenio Valdés and Juan Molina, and Canadian curators Scott Watson and Keith Wallace. It is the result of two years of research and planning. Many Canadians now travel to Cuba’s beaches. This large multi-venue exhibition is an opportunity to see how Cubans see the situation in Cuba through the eyes of contemporary art.
Utopian Territories: New Art from Cuba. Exhibition catalogue.
Scott Watson (Canadian, b. 1950) is Director Emeritus and Research Fellow at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. A curator whose career has spanned more than thirty-five years, Watson is internationally recognized for his research and work in curatorial and exhibition studies, contemporary art and issues, and art theory and criticism. His distinctions include the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2010); the Alvin Balkind Award for Creative Curatorship in BC Arts (2008) and the UBC Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance Development in the Visual and Performing Arts (2005). Watson has published extensively in the areas of contemporary Canadian and international art. His 1990 monograph on Jack Shadbolt earned the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 1991. Recent publications include Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry (2015); Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries (2011), a finalist for the 2012 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize; “Race, Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of the Modern Canadian Landscape” and “Disfigured Nature” (in Beyond Wilderness, McGill University Press, 2007); and “Transmission Difficulties: Vancouver Painting in the 1960s” (in Paint, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006).