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.

At the recent opening of his exhibition The Seriousness of Play, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas spoke eloquently to a packed room. Surrounded by his paintings, prints, and sculptures, he talked about the spaces that exist within and between art forms—and within and between cultures. He also touched on a contemporary problem for artists of indigenous descent: is this work art or ethnicity? The question, he said, had originally been posed to him by Bill Reid, who shared with Yahgulanaas mixed Haida and European heritage, but whose acclaim was focused entirely on his Haida-identified art-making.

You might not know his name, but if you've ever driven down Knight Street or passed by UBC's Thunderbird Winter Sports Arena, you've definitely seen his work. Contemporary artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas' latest piece, SEI, won't be unveiled until later this summer, but the Georgia Straight was invited to see the piece just as the finishing touches were being made.

The man who invented Haida Manga is standing in an improvised studio at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is positioned between his sculptural works in progress - two large, copper-coated "shields," which he will install outside MOA's front doors - talking about meeting places, middle places, and margins. "I'm trying to play the edge between the neighbourhoods," he says, indicating the way the interface between First Nations and colonial culture has shaped his current project - and his life. "I grew up that way. I was the only pale-looking Haida in the whole village... the only green-eyed, light-haired kid."

Amid the usual flurry of pre-exhibition activity at the Vancouver Art Gallery, painters, preparators, curators, all working in quick concert to prepare Raven Travelling for its public opening this Saturday (June 10), unusual cross-cultural elements emerge. Billed by the VAG as the most comprehensive exhibition of Haida art ever assembled, it is also a ground-breaker for that institution in terms of cooperation with a First Nations community.