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The Bill Reid Centre for Northwest Coast Art Studies is within the Department of First Nations Studies at Simon Fraser University. The Centre was established by the Senate of the University in 2005 and currently shares space with the Bill Reid Gallery at 639 Hornby St., Vancouver, near SFU's Harbour Centre Campus. The Centre is devoted to the study of First Nations art of the Northwest Coast as the visual embodiment of a broad cultural development since the end of the last Ice Age.  

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A major activity of the Centre is to visually document through photographs, drawings and other works, the depth and richness of Northwest Coast Art in the hundreds of communities in which monumental architecture and sculpture were recorded.

 

In the late 1960's photographer Adelaide de Menil and artist Bill Reid explored the Northwest Coast from the Straits of Georgia to Southeast Alaska. During their travels they made a record of the monumental art and architecture of Coastal First Nations. De Menil captured the old village sites on film while Reid used words to express the feelings evoked by the ancient sculptures. Their work was published in the volume Out of the Silence (1971).

Only 62 of over 800 of de Menil’s prints were published in that volume. 500 of these images were displayed at the Bill Reid Gallery, including 22 that were selected for printing by guest curator, Peter Morin, in the exhibition Revisiting the Silence.

The above YouTube clip is a small sample of the images presented in that show.

Visit The Bill Reid Centre's Digital Image Collection at the Simon Fraser University Library