The Alaska State Museum’s FY23 Grant-in-Aid (GIA) program is accepting applications through June 1. Mini-Grants of up to $2000 are available for small museums with annual operating budgets less than $100K. Museums of any size may apply for a Regular Grant of up to $12,000 to fund a project. Museums may apply for just one grant.
The Sheldon Jackson Museum is recruiting for a full-time, permanent year-round Museum Protection & Visitor Services Assistant to work the front desk, galleries and facility of the Sheldon Jackson Museum.
This position provides administrative support for museum operations, public programming and education, and performs other front-line work sharing and safeguarding Alaska’s cultural heritage.
Nationally recognized tech trainer Carson Block will offer IT workshops for staff who works in libraries, archives, and museums.
May 16-17: Juneau
May 19-20: Fairbanks
May 23-24: Anchorage
Learn the basics of computer hardware, software, and networking. Travel scholarships are available.
On Day 1, get hands on with an open computer to get a literal feel for computer parts. Carson will also discuss software basics. Day 2 will focus on wifi and other basic networking issues. Carson is still finalizing content so these agendas are tentative. Sponsored by the Alaska Library Network.
Do you or anyone you know still hold copies of The Alaska Spotlight? If so, let us know!
The Alaska Spotlight was an Anchorage weekly that started in 1952 and ended sometime in the 1960s. The Alaska State Library holds several issues in 1964 and 1966 on microfilm, but we are missing quite a lot.
We are especially interested in any issues from 1952 through 1963 so that we can digitize these newspapers and put them on Chronicling America. The Alaska Spotlight was an African American newspaper that would help represent other voices and perspectives not currently present in our digitized newspapers.
"Looking for newspaper issues!" by C. Russell, April 4, 2022. Alaska's Digital Newspaper Project.
Museums Alaska has announced its grant awards for the first round of the Alaska Art Fund (previously the Art Acquisition Fund) and Collections Management Fund grant programs.
Both programs have been expanded this year with the three-year renewal of Rasmuson Foundation's partnership with Museums Alaska.
In this round, Museums Alaska is supporting eleven organizations across Alaska from Fairbanks to Kodiak with $123,625 in funding.
Funding is available to assist three tribal and/or public libraries or other relevant cultural organizations serving Indigenous communities, who are interested in creating their own story projects similar to Niraqutaq Qallemcinek in Igiugig.
Igiugig Tribal Library is sponsoring the project through a grant from the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM) and National Endowment for the Humanities.
Each selected organization will collect and share three-to-five minute, locally captured audio stories posted to a website, with stories paired with relevant photos and available in English and Native languages. While only three story projects can be supported, free consulting assistance will be available to all other organizations interested in starting their own story projects.
Anchorage Museum teams with writer, newspaper, to help community reconnect in covid-changed world
After years of pandemic-forced isolation, roiling politics, and all kinds of losses and disruptions, the Anchorage Museum is rekindling a sense of community and healing by teaming with an Anchorage writer and Alaska newspaper to gather and share residents’ pandemic stories.
“I talked to bartenders and military folks, hairdressers and corporate executives, nurses, business owners, incarcerated people, teachers, restaurant servers, parents, older people, therapists, politicians and leaders in many faith communities, collecting hours of interviews,” says Julia O’Malley, Anchorage Museum writer-in-residence and leader of a collaborative project called Neighbors: Stories from Anchorage’s Pandemic Years.
Wells Fargo closed its museum in Anchorage and has given much of its collection of Native artifacts to another institution that focuses on the state’s Indigenous cultures...
Now, much of this historical trove has been turned over to the Alaskan Native Heritage Center, a museum that focuses on Indigenous culture and is operated by Alaska Natives. The donation by Wells Fargo of more than 1,700 objects nearly doubled the center’s collection and enabled the museum, which opened in 1999 as the only statewide center dedicated to celebrating all Alaska Native cultures, to overhaul its programming.
“These items will help us share our cultures with people around the world, but they will also help us work directly with our community,” Emily Edenshaw, the heritage center’s president and chief executive, said in an interview.
As One Alaskan Museum Closed, a Native Heritage Center Prospered" by Zachary Small,
The Institute of Museum and Library Services announced today that the University of Alaska Fairbanks Kuskokwim Consortium Library is among 30 finalists for the 2022 National Medal for Museum and Library Service. The Kuskokwim Consortium Library is the only institution in Alaska to be selected as a 2022 finalist for this award.
The medal is the nation’s highest honor given to museums and libraries that demonstrate significant impact in their communities. For more than 25 years, the award has honored institutions that demonstrate excellence in service to their communities.
"Kuskokwim Consortium Library named finalist for national medal." UAF News and Information.
The Alaska Historical Commission will meet by MS Teams on Tuesday, June 7, 2022, from 12:30 pm to 4 pm. The agenda includes updates on historic preservation programs, approval of priorities for FY 22 CLG grants, and consideration of geographic name proposals. Any person or group wishing to address the Commission on geographic name proposals, or any other historic preservation issue, is invited to participate in the public comment session starting at 1:30 pm.
A new project at the University of Maine is bringing engineers, artists and a campus museum together to return culturally sensitive artifacts to an Alaska tribe that wants the items returned.
The UMaine team is creating a replica of one artifact using 3D printing, then refining it so a copy of the Tlingit Frog Clan Helmet will be on display at the Hudson Museum after it returns the original to the Tlingit tribe in southern Alaska.
"UMaine is using 3D-printing to help it return cultural artifacts to an Alaska tribe" by Sawyer Loftus, May 3, 2022. Bangor Daily News.
Ishmael Angaluuk Hope (Tlingit name Khaagwáask') is a Tlingit and Inupiaq poet, Indigenous scholar, video game writer, film actor, and novelist. His current and upcoming projects include: "Walking Dead: Last Mile" (Skybound Entertainment), a video game for Facebook; "Likoodzí Shkalneek Áyá: The Stories of Robert Zuboff," edited with Matthew Spellberg and a team of translators and elders, to be published by Dumbarton Oaks; "Yéi Áyá Yax Shutaan: This is How It Ends," a Tlingit and English speculative fiction epic, for which he received a Rasmuson Foundation grant to write in the summer of 2022; and "The Dilettante," a novel...
Here is his most popular poetry piece:..
"National Poetry Month: An Interview With Alaskan Poet Ishmael Angaluuk Hope" by Dennis Zotigh,
Its oldest gallery, Northwest Coast Hall, reopens May 13 with rare cultural objects and a fresh emphasis on the lives of Indigenous people who made them.
Crafted of wood, iron, plant fiber and animal sinew, the model of 10 men paddling a canoe would strike most viewers as a beautiful object. But to Haa’yuups, head of the House of Takiishtakamlthat-h of the Huupa‘chesat-h First Nation, on Vancouver Island, Canada, it also holds a mystical power. A spirit canoe, it represents the ripple of invisible oars in the water — a sound that people of his community report hearing after they have purified themselves through fasting and bathing.
"Museum of Natural History’s Renewed Hall Holds Treasures and Pain" by Arthur Lubow, May 5, 2022. NYTimes.com.
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