One of Metro Vancouver’s top museums is putting its focus on Asia-Pacific exhibits and hopes to attract enough sponsorship to eventually open an Asian wing.

UBC’s Museum of Anthropology has unveiled an exhibition schedule that features two Asian exhibits: (In) visible, a collection of works by seven contemporary Taiwanese artists mixing traditional beliefs and modern sensitivities, and In The Footprint of the Crocodile, which features ceremonial artifacts from the secluded Sepik region of Papua New Guinea.

The exhibitions come on the heels of last year’s appointment of two Asia-focused curators — Fuyubi Nakamura and April Liu — a crucial move for the museum as it looks to build a strong cultural presence for Asian people in the Metro Vancouver region.

“Particularly important for MOA, as a museum committed to community engagement, is that between them they speak and write Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese, so can communicate directly with communities, institutions and sponsors in Vancouver and in Asia,” said museum director Anthony Alan Shelton. He said they both have experience curating exhibitions with an Asia-Pacific focus.

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Shelton said the museum’s integration of Asian exhibits and cultural features will be long-term. The museum plans to add a Chinese-language introduction to its website in the coming months. The (In) visible exhibit, which runs from Nov. 20 to April 3 and is sponsored by the Taiwanese government, will be bilingual. Shelton said officials hope to organize tours in Chinese.

The In The Footprint exhibit will open March 1 and feature art from one of the largest freshwater wetland systems in the region.

The curators have already reached out to other Metro communities (such as those originally from the Philippines) to plan further displays, exhibits, demonstrations and workshops.

The hope, Shelton said, is to eventually build an Asian wing, which has been eagerly sought after by Vancouver’s sizable Asian communities.

“Forty per cent of MOA’s collections (17,000 out of 38,000 objects) are from Asia,” he said. “And we continue to receive major donations every year … (An Asian wing) will present internationally important exhibitions of Asian art and culture to Vancouver and acknowledge the importance of Asia and Asian culture in building British Columbia.”

Nakamura, an Oxford graduate whose professional path has stretched from Argentina and Australia to Japan and Great Britain, said she was drawn to curating the (In) visible exhibition because Taiwan is historically a meeting place of various, divergent cultural influences and because there as a sense of mystery created by westerners’ lack of understanding on the topic.

“I realized that not many people know about Taiwan in this country, and not many people knew Taiwan had many aboriginal peoples,” Nakamura said. “I want people to see the distinct different kind of cultures there, to understand what it is.”

She added that more thematic, cross-regional exhibits are in the works, including one planned for 2017 featuring the effect of written language on East Asian cultures such as China, Japan and Korea. In addition, the museum is planning to invite local artists to respond to these exhibits in an attempt to create more creative, artistic dialogue.

More information can be found at the museum’s website, http://moa.ubc.ca/.

chchiang@vancouversun.com

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