Charlotte Townsend-Gault is an art historian, professor emeritus, author, and curator. Townsend-Gault’s research, teaching and scholarship concerns contemporary visual and material Native American and First Nations cultures, particularly those of the Pacific Northwest.
Townsend-Gault developed early career experience as curator of the Mezzanine Gallery at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design between 1969 and 1973. She then left NSCAD to pursue her doctoral studies, subsequently joining the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia in the late 1980s. Townsend-Gault is also an Associate faculty member with the Department of Anthropology at UBC, and an Honorary Professor in the Department of Anthropology at University College London.
Scholarship
Townsend-Gault’s own writing and collaborative editorial projects are recognized as foundational reading for students and scholars working in the areas of museums studies, museum anthropology, and the art history of Indigenous arts of the Northwest Coast. The 2013 anthology Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas was co-edited by Townsend-Gault, Jennifer Kramer and Ki-Ke-In, and has been awarded three prizes:
Townsend-Gault’s writing has appeared in art history and anthropology journals, and she has participated as a reviewer in publications such as RACAR, Vanguard and C Magazine.
Selected publications
Books and exhibition catalogues
Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Jennifer Kramer and Ki-Ke-In. Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013.
Karen Duffek and Charlotte Townsend-Gault. Bill Reid and Beyond: Expanding on Modern Native Art. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004.
Townsend-Gault, Charlotte and James Luna. Rebecca Belmore: The Named and the Unnamed. Vancouver BC: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery UBC, 2003. e-Artexte: https://e-artexte.ca/id/eprint/21312/ Belkin.
“The Raven, the Eagle, the Sparrows, and Thomas Crow: Making Native Modernism on the Northwest Coast.” In Essays on Native Modernism: complexities and contradiction in American Indian art..
"Ways of Knowing", in The Anthropology of Art: a reader, edited by Howard Morphy and Morgan Perkins..
“When the Gloves Are Off: The Queen’s Baton – Doing What to Whom.” In Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment, edited by Nicholas Thomas and Christopher Pinney..
“Conceptual Daze At NSCAD – The Mezzanine.” In Conceptual Art: The NSCAD Connection 1967-1973, edited and curated by Bruce Barber. Nova Scotia College of Art and Design..
