Martha Black

Martha Black (born 1945) is a Canadian art historian who specializes in Northwest Coast art and issues in museum management and repatriation. Black is the author or a number of articles and a book on Heiltsuk and Nuu Chah Nuulth art, and issues related to repatriation outside of the treaty process. She is a curator at the Royal British Columbia Museum. Biography Black received her MA in interdisciplinary studies from York University, Toronto and a PhD in art history from the University of Victoria, both focused on Heiltsuk art and museum collections. Black has worked with the Heiltsuk community, both in her research and in the collaborative museum exhibit Kaxlaya Gvilas at the Royal Ontario Museum. As she says: "The Royal Ontario Museum holds a major but little-known collection of Northwest coast native art and artifacts acquired by the Reverend Dr. Richard Whitfield Large at Bella Bella, British Columbia between 1899 and 1906. Although the R. W. Large Collection is one of the most important Heiltsuk collections in existence because of its unique documentation, there had never been a comprehensive study of it". Black undertook a study of the collection in her book "Bella Bella: A Season of Heiltsuk Art" and worked with the Heiltsuk to produce an art exhibit based on the collection with a number of contemporary pieces. She described the collection gathered in Bella Bella by the Missionary doctor R. W. Large. The collection, unusual for its associated information allowed Black to provide biological information about five named Heiltsuk artists. The exhibit Kaxlaya Gvi'ilas was a partnership between the Heiltsuk, the Museum of Anthropology (UBC), the Royal Ontario Museum, and Black. A collaborative exhibit, it contained a combination of historical works from the Royal Ontario Museum's R.W. Large Collection and contemporary artwork from the Heiltsuk village of Waglisla (Bella Bella).