Born on December 17, 1956 in Vancouver, Karen Duffek has been a curator of art at the UBC Museum of Anthropology with a special interest in First Nations culture and history in the Pacific Northwest. With Bill McLennan, she documented how infrared photography has helped to recover and revitalize Aboriginal painting in The Transforming Image: Painted Arts of Northwest Coast First Nations (2000) and she co-edited 20 perspectives for Bill Reid and Beyond (2004), a collection that arose from a 1999 symposium, The Legacy of Bill Reid: A Critical Enquiry. In this anthology, the president of the Haida Nation, Guujaaw, suggested Reid has been overly dissected and the more fractured something is, the harder it is to recognize. Her other titles include A Guide to Buying Contemporary Northwest Coast Indian Arts (1983), Bill Reid: Beyond the Essential Form (1986), Beyond History (1989) and Robert Davidson: The Abstract Edge (2004).

BOOKS:

Duffek, Karen. A Guide to Buying Contemporary Northwest Coast Indian Arts (UBC Museum of Anthropology, 1983).
Duffek, Karen. Bill Reid: Beyond the Essential Form (UBC Press, 1986).
Duffek, Karen & Tom Hill (editors). Beyond History (Vancouver Art Gallery, 1989).
Duffek, Karen & Bill McLennan. The Transforming Image: Painted Arts of Northwest Coast First Nations (UBC Press, 2000).
Duffek, Karen & Charlotte Townsend-Gault (editors). Bill Reid and Beyond: Expanding on Modern Native Art (D&M, 2004).
Robert Davidson: The Abstract Edge (UBC Museum of Anthropology, 2004).

Co-author of:

Bill Reid and Beyond: Expanding on Modern Native Art (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004), with Charlotte Townsend-Gault.

[Image: Doug Crammer begins shaping the Sea Wolf sculpture at UBC in 1962. Photo from Bill Reid and Beyond.]

[BCBW 2004] "Art" "First Nations"