The Belkin is delighted to announce that Tania Willard has been appointed the gallery’s Director/Curator beginning January 2026.
“I am thrilled to announce that Tania Willard will be joining the Faculty of Arts at UBC Vancouver,” said Dean of Arts Clare Haru Crowston. “A highly accomplished visual artist and curator, Tania is internationally recognized for her work and has made a remarkable impact as the inaugural director of the UBC Okanagan Art Gallery. Her leadership will bring a bold and transformative vision to the Belkin, expanding opportunities for engagement with communities on campus, across BC, and beyond. As the first Indigenous director of the Belkin Gallery, Tania’s appointment marks a significant milestone in advancing the Faculty of Arts’ and UBC’s commitment to Indigenous reconciliation and resurgence.”
In collaboration with the Belkin’s staff, Willard will establish the gallery’s overall artistic vision and operation, including its exhibitions, programs, collections and acquisitions, with its present focus on acquiring work by women IBPOC artists. Willard comes to the Belkin from UBC Okanagan in Syilx territory (Kelowna, BC), where she is the inaugural director of the UBC Okanagan Gallery, assistant professor in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies and director of UBCO’s Indigenous Art Intensive, an annual program that gathers students, artists, curators, writers and scholars to discuss contemporary ideas and discourse rooted in Indigenous art-making. Willard’s research and creative processes are informed by land-based and community-engaged art practices, connections to culture and family, and intersections between Indigenous and other cultures. Often focusing on Secwépemc aesthetics, language and land, Willard explores the shifts and tensions between ideas of the contemporary and the traditional. Through her support of language revitalization efforts in Secwépemc communities and her collaborative projects like BUSH Gallery, a conceptual space for land-based art and action led by Indigenous artists, Willard centres art as an Indigenous resurgent act.
“The Belkin is hugely looking forward to Tania Willard’s leadership and the exciting directions her vision will develop institutionally, curatorially and pedagogically. This is a significant moment for the Belkin and for the arts ecology writ large,” said Melanie O’Brian, the Belkin’s Acting Director/Curator.
In accepting the position Willard says she is honoured to be selected to work with the staff and faculty of the Belkin and the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory in Musqueam territory and plans to focus on art that pushes the boundaries, programming that addresses equity and access as well as strategies for improving the infrastructure for collections and looking to the future of the cultural district at UBC Vancouver campus.
The Belkin is fortunate to have worked with Willard in the past through exhibitions Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools (2013), Hexsa’am: To Be Here Always (2019), Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts (2020) and the current exhibition Town + Country: Narratives of Property and Capital, alongside artist talks, studio visits, performances, and representation in the university’s permanent art collection.
Willard received an MFA from UBC Okanagan in 2018. Her curatorial work includes Unceded Territories: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun at the UBC Museum of Anthropology (2016), co-curated with Karen Duffek, and the touring exhibition, Beat Nation: Art Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture (2012-14), co-curated with Kathleen Ritter. She was a curator in residence with grunt gallery and Kamloops Art Gallery. In 2016, Willard received the Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art from the Hnatyshyn Foundation, the 2020 Shadbolt Foundation VIVA Award, and was named a 2022 Forge Project Fellow. Her work with BUSH gallery was recognized through the Ruth Foundation for the Arts Future Studies award (2022). Willard’s artistic projects have been exhibited widely and collections of her work include the Vancouver Art Gallery, Kamloops Art Gallery, Burnaby Art Gallery and more.
Alongside her Directorship at the Belkin, Willard will be appointed as an associate professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory.
The Belkin also takes this opportunity to thank Melanie O’Brian for graciously and adeptly stepping in as Acting Director for the past three and a half years, stewarding the gallery and its staff through this time of transition with a strong curatorial program and exceptional leadership. O’Brian will continue to guide the Belkin’s curatorial program in her role as Associate Director/Curator.