India Rael Young joined the Royal BC Museum in 2019 as the curator for art and images. She oversees the collections of paintings, prints, drawings and photographs, which are primarily housed in the BC Archives. Highlights of the collections include early BC photographer Hannah Maynard’s BC Gems, Emily Carr’s sketchbooks and the thousands of photographs from Beautiful British Columbia Magazine. She looks forward to expanding the collection towards artists working in the province after 1950 and artists previously excluded from institutional collections.
Dr. Young’s research and exhibitions trace Canadian and American art histories through feminist, decolonial and critical race frameworks. Her curatorship has brought exhibitions of media arts and contemporary Indigenous arts to museums and art spaces in Canada, the United States and Russia. She also teaches and writes for arts publications.
Education
BA, Literature, Eugene Lang College, The New School
MA, Indigenous Arts, University of Victoria
PhD, Indigenous Arts, University of New Mexico
Areas of Interest
Regional Art Histories
Contemporary Indigenous Arts
Theories and methods of Reproduction
Institutional Histories
