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October 05 2011

Donald Ellis Negotiates Sale of Captain James Cook’s Club

Donald Ellis Gallery was thrilled to acquire late in 2011 a highly important Nuu-chah-nulth club presented to Captain James Cook on his Third Voyage to the Pacific in 1778. The last privately held object from Cook's collection, Donald Ellis was able to negotiate its sale to the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, with funding provided by the Audain Foundation for the Visual Arts. The club remains the only First Nations work of art collected by Cook that can be seen in Canada today.

Read more about the acquisition in The Globe and Mail; The Vancouver Sun; and Maclean's.

UBC's official statement on the acquisition is available here.

Donald Ellis Negotiates Sale of Captain James Cook’s Club