Dennos Museum Center > Exhibitions > Upcoming Exhibitions Revised 5/24/05

Inuit Art at the Dennos Museum Center

Bird with a Fish
Bird with a Fish
Lucy
Cape Dorset
stencil, 1967

Caribou
Caribou
Osuitok Ipeelie
Cape Dorset
serpentine and bone, 1995

Bird with a Fish
Magic Man
Ralph Porter,
Gjoa Haven
serpentine, antler,
bone, sinew, 1997

Caribou
Eskimo Fox Trapper
Ohotok, Cape Dorset
stonecut, 1961

Inuit Family
Family Iqupta
Repulse Bay
serpentine, 1982

Power Family Inuit Gallery

Power Family Inuit Gallery

The works in the Dennos Museum Center's Power Family Inuit Gallery present a survey of Inuit stonecut, stencil and lithograph prints, tapestries, sculptures and artifacts from the late 50s to the present. Selected from over 1000 objects in the Museum's permanent collection, the exhibition features artists from numerous communities within Nunavut, the new Canadian territory. As a whole, the exhibition is intended to reveal the vision and scope of Contemporary Inuit art, not only through first generation masters such as Parr, Pudlo Pudlat, Kenojuak Ashevak, and Kananginak, to name a few, but "second generation" artists as well.

Inuit Family
Family Iqupta
Repulse Bay
serpentine, 1982
Ethnographically approached, the exhibit reveals the evolution of a dynamic culture still in process. It is a reflection of life on the land; a record of daily events, a glimpse into their once practiced magico-religious spiritual belief system. It is a visual narrative which serves as a vehicle for keeping alive the old ways; the old life of skin tents and snow houses, the nomadic life when seasonal hunting dictated life style and, in essence, survival. What was once known only through oral tradition is brought forth in their visual imagery with vitality and clarity of purpose. The artwork exhibited serves as artistic documentation, which preserves the past and ushers in the present. Many of the artists represented are one of the last generations of Inuit to reach maturity "on the land," before stepping into a modern world.

History of the Collection

World wide awareness of Inuit art originated with the assistance of James Houston, noted artist, author and designer for Stueben Glass, who collected small carvings made by Canada's aboriginal (Inuit) peoples in the late 1940s. He brought the sculptures to southern Canada where they were subsequently sold to support the economic needs of the Inuit people.

In 1953 James Houston solicited support from his friend, Eugene Power, who was born in Traverse City, to help import Inuit art into the United States. Power, who owned and operated University Microfilms in Ann Arbor, established a non-profit gallery in Ann Arbor called Eskimo Art Incorporated to import the work. He encouraged the Cranbrook Institute of Science to host the first exhibition of Inuit art in the United States in 1953.

Later Houston taught the Inuit to make unique stone cut and seal skin stencil prints and in 1959 the first collection of Inuit prints was released at Cape Dorset.

In 1960 Wilbur Munnecke of Field Enterprises in Chicago, who was on the Board of Eskimo Inc., gave Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) in Traverse City a small collection of sculpture and prints to sell and Bernie Rink, Director of the Library, used proceeds from the sale to purchase some of the work. Thus began the collection of Inuit Art.

In 1991 the opening of the Dennos Museum Center at NMC provided a permanent gallery for the collection and opportunities for programming.

Links to Inuit Information:

 

 
Northwestern Michigan College