Metropolitan Museum of Art displays work by Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas

Holly McKenzie-Sutter

The Georgia Straight

Arts

August 9, 2017

Yahgulanaas's work Yelthadaas is part of the artist's series Coppers from the Hood, named after Haida copper shields exchanged by chiefs
during traditional potlatches. The piece paints a Haida design onto the hood of a car.

Visitors to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art can now expect to spot a work by B.C.'s own Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas in Gallery 399. The museum announced today that the Haida artist's piece Yelthadaas is on display in the museum's permanent collection.

Yelthadaas is a part of Yahgulanaas's series titled Coppers from the Hood, named in honour of the shield-like coppers exchanged by Haida chiefs during traditional potlatches. In a press release from the artist, the curator of the museum said he believes Yahgulanaas is the only living Canadian indigenous artist with work currently on display.

Yahgulanaas is an award-winning, mixed-media artist whose pieces have also been displayed in the UBC Museum of Anthropology and the British Museum. He has worked in sculpture, painting, and a Japanese-influenced illustrative style called "Haida Manga." Yahgulanaas is currently working on a story called Carpenter's Fin in Haida Manga style that will be displayed as a mural in another, currently unannounced American museum, set to be unveiled in 2018.