Robert Davidson is one of Canada’s most important contemporary artists. He has been immensely influential in the direction that modern Northwest Coast art has developed over the last six decades. Davidson works in a variety of mediums, including wood, gold, silver, argillite, silkscreen and bronze. Davidson belongs to the Eagle clan and his Haida name is Guud San Glans, Eagle of the Dawn. His work is held in private and public collections worldwide, including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, Quebec and the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles. In 1995 he received the National Aboriginal Achievement Award and the Order of British Columbia. The following year he was awarded the Order of Canada, and he is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. He received both the Governor General’s Award for Visual Arts and the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement Award in the Visual Arts in 2010.

Celebrated internationally, Robert Davidson has devoted his life’s work to the evolution and radical re-interpretation of Haida design vocabulary. The great-grandson of legendary artist Charles Edenshaw, Davidson is considered a leading figure of the Haida cultural renaissance, and draws on historical forms both Western and Indigenous to create a hybrid visual language.