Collecting B.C. Artists

Gary Sim has amassed a remarkable 20,000-and-counting database of the province’s artists.

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Gary Sim collects artists the way some billionaires collect art. His expanding digital archive, simply named British Columbia Artists, runs to some 20,000 names and includes 1,500 images. Sim, an artist and art collector, was inspired to create his database after buying a watercolour by Vancouver artist Maud Sherman in 1996. 

He was surprised to discover Sherman, who lived from 1900 to 1976, had exhibited for more than 40 years. “Few people know about Maud Sherman,” Sim says from his book-lined home in Vancouver. “If someone as distinguished as her can disappear, what does this mean about my art?”

Sherman’s painting shows Mace Point on Savary Island. Sim’s research revealed she had strong ties to the small sandy-beached island off the Sunshine Coast, along with a fascinating circle of family and friends. That led him to explore other artists of the era, rooting through newspaper clippings, art books and exhibition brochures. The wealth of material he accumulated became the foundation of his archive.   

It has been a herculean task. Sim made good headway with early, less numerous artists, but has found more recent decades challenging. “It’s impossible to list every post-1950 artist,” he says. “But I’ve got every pre-1950 artist ever listed in a catalogue or reference.”

The sole criterion for entry is for artists to have exhibited their work. The ratio of male to female artists is balanced, he says, and the archive includes racialized artists. A cursory search shows Sing Lim (1915-1993), Grafton Brown (1841-1918), Doug Cranmer (1927-2006) and Takao Tanabe (1926-), artists of Chinese, Black, Indigenous and Japanese heritage, respectively. 

At first, public access to Sim’s database was limited to the purchase of a CD-ROM or through databases at certain institutions. But, in 2019, he released the entire collection online at no cost. He says the database gets an average of 60 visits a day. 

Sim frequently accepts donations of artwork and other materials declined by institutions or otherwise destined for the trash. In turn, he has donated many exhibition catalogues, monographs and artist books to institutions, including some 1,000 items to the National Gallery of Canada. In 2018, the gallery’s library gallery produced a bibliographic exhibition, BC Artists ­– The Gary Sim Donation, accompanied by an exhibition catalogue. 

Charles Hill, curator emeritus at the Ottawa gallery, says Sim has created an amazing resource of artists, many of whom were largely unknown beyond their region.

“He’s dug up so much,” says Hill. “He goes well beyond a list of artists, including information about societies, biographies and exhibitions records.”  

Hill says the database is valuable for students, artists, historians and curators. “Gary is interested in everyone. His diligence and intelligence in the organization of the material makes this an extremely resourceful database.”

Sim’s site complements other databases, such as the National Gallery’s database of Canadian artists, as well as one at Concordia University in Montreal focused on women artists.

Sim, who retired from his 25-year career as an architectural technologist in 2019, has also been focused on the completion of Looking for Maud, a narrative non-fiction account of his research on Sherman. He also continues to make art, primarily prints and pen-and-ink drawings, often of regional landscapes.

“It can be tedious,” Sim says about his work on the database. “But the response from people who email me or send material out of the blue makes me feel what I’m doing is worthwhile.”

And, yes, Gary Sim, artist, is listed in the database. ■

The British Columbia Artists database is online at www.sim-publishing.com/bca/bcahome.htm.

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