Bau-Xi Wong

Bau-Xi Wong emigrated to Vancouver in 1956. Already a trained artist, he worked at a cedar shingle mill to support his mother and younger brothers in addition to taking classes at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art and Design). In 1963, his painting was one of five singled out in an exhibition in the Seattle Art Museum by critic Clement Greenberg; Wong also won a prize at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts for which he received mention in the city column of Jack Wasserman in The Vancouver Sun. Wong exhibited in the annual BC Artists exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery between 1947 and 1968, and with the BC Society of Artists from 1965 to 1968. In 1965 on the advice of his teacher, Ron Stonier, Wong opened the Bau-Xi Gallery at 555 Hamilton Street in the Del Mar Hotel across the street from the VSA as a location to show his own work in addition to other Vancouver artists. (555 Hamilton Street is Vancouver’s most enduring single gallery space as the site of the Bau-Xi Gallery from 1965 to 1972; the Contemporary Art Gallery from 1973 to 2001; Belkin Satellite Gallery from 2001 to 2008; and Or Gallery from 2008 to 2019.) At the time of its establishment, Vancouver had only one contemporary art gallery, the New Design Gallery, founded by Alvin Balkind and Abraham Rogatnick. The Bau-Xi Gallery became a locus for emerging Vancouver artists to show their work (the inaugural exhibition was work by Wayne Ngan) and is now the longest running contemporary art gallery in the city.