About Carl Beam

Carl Beam was an Ojibwa artist born in M’Chigeeng, Manitoulin Island in 1943. He worked with a variety of media including painting, printmaking, and sculpture to bring attention to issues that affect contemporary Indigenous cultures.

Beam was a key artist in eliminating the boundary between Indigenous and contemporary art in Canada. In 1986, his artwork, The North American Iceberg, was purchased by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, as the first work acquired from an Indigenous artist as a contemporary piece, rather than an ethnographic piece. His work has been included in various group exhibitions including Indigena: Perspectives of Indigenous Peoples on Five Hundred Years, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (1992).

Beam studied art at the Kootenay School of Art (1971), and the University of Victoria (1973), and received his MFA at the University of Alberta, Edmonton (1976). He was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts in 2000, and in 2005, was a recipient of the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. After his passing in 2005, a major retrospective of his work was organized by the National Gallery of Canada in 2010, which traveled to different cities in Canada and the United States.