On the fourth floor of the Vancouver Art Gallery, one room belongs entirely to Emily Carr. In normal exhibit procedure, her biography is neatly printed and sketches and paintings fill the four walls. In Totem Poles, Kitseukla from 1912, gray carvings rise from the earthy tones of a village, the poles shaped into the signature animal forms of Northwest Indigenous tribes; it was the first Emily Carr painting the gallery ever bought. But another biography is also on display, both metaphorically and quite literally printed in text—the story of Vancouver Art Gallery itself.

That Emily Carr rates a special exhibition (up through September 2024) isn't surprising; the painter is so central to British Columbia culture that if the gallery doesn't have any of her works on display, staff hear about it from visitors. It holds more of her work than anyone else in the world, and expanded in 1951 mostly to accommodate all the Carr it owned. But as construction begins on a new building three blocks away, set to open in 2028, the gallery is questioning how to tell the story of an artist so central to the institution itself.

The name may not resonate with Americans, but Carr is "considered one of the most iconic modernist painters in Canada," notes senior curator Diana Freundl. Born in 1871 and working in the early twentieth century, Carr was well regarded by the country's famed Group of Seven. Member Lawren Harris even said to her, "You are one of us." (That she was never formally part of their crew likely comes down to the fact that it was the early 1900s and said Seven were all men.) It was a time, says Freundl, when artists in Commonwealth countries were trying to strike out on their own from Britain, "Trying to forge a Canadianness." No one repped the west coast of Canada like Carr.

Today, in her hometown of Victoria, the Carr House National Historic Site preserves her childhood home, a stately Victorian turned museum with exhibits on Carr's writing and political cartooning. But it is Carr's landscape paintings, rich Northwest forests presented in swirls and streaks, that most Canadians know.

In the early twentieth century, Carr traveled her British Columbia homeland on sketching trips, eager to capture what she considered a tragically fading society, Canada's First Nations. She painted longboats and totem poles, and in what may be her most famous painting, a stately white structure in the forest titled "Indian Church." But Carr's background was European, and modern culture understands that kind of representation a little differently.

"It was a sincere effort to document something she saw disappearing," says Freundl. "But although she was sincere at the time, it's also seen as being exploitative and romanticizing a disappearing culture." Carr looked past the contemporary revitalization of Canada's Indigenous culture, making the signature understanding of those Northwest First Nations a condescending one, wrought by an outsider. "When we reflect on it we can see it was extremely exploitative," says Freundl. 

And in Vancouver, the gallery continuously reexamines Carr and her legacy. Sometimes it's an exhibit featuring Carr in conversation with another artist, comparing and contrasting and tracing influence. And sometimes, like for the next year, she gets an exhibit all to herself, titled Emily Carr: A Room of Her Own.

Beyond just the sketches and still lifes and landscapes, plus a section on the restoration of Carr's delicate works, the show asks its visitors a question: how to handle Emily Carr in the next space? A solo gallery, or integration with other artists, shows, experiences? The new $400 million Vancouver Art Gallery is a project almost two decades in the making, a blocky shape in sharp contrast with its current home, a neoclassical old courthouse from 1906 designed by imposing building architect Francis Rattenbury. Apps and a webpage put it to the viewers: "Vote! Should Emily Carr have a room of her own in the new Gallery building?"

With a whole university of art and design named after her, her own postage stamp, a statue outside Victoria's Empress Hotel, and near ubiquitous recognition in her home country, Carr's impact is not the question. Even as modern scholars and viewers reinterpret her relationship to Indigenous Canada, she remains one of British Columbia's hometown heroes. She is woven permanently into the fabric of Vancouver's central art museum. But to Freundl, the appeal of Emily Carr hits different for anyone familiar with the Northwest wilderness. "She captures the essence of the forest. It's uncanny," she says. "You look at the trees, you think, 'It looks like an Emily Carr painting.'"