EXHIBITS & EVENTS IN MAY
New exhibition opening at the Alaska State Museum
Friday, May 5, 4:30-7 pm
Panel discussion 6:30 pm
The full group of three interrelated exhibitions, co-curated by artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs, that explore contemporary and historical Alaska Native issues and spotlight gut as a conduit for Indigenous voices, opens during May First Friday.
Co-curator and artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs, co-curator and conservator Dr. Ellen Carrlee, and anthropologist Dr. Sven Haakanson, Jr. will participate in a panel discussion.
The exhibit trilogy
Visceral: Verity, a new exhibition of work by contemporary artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs, includes mixed-media installations that combine natural and synthetic materials and evoke questions of authentic experience, truth, abuse, transparency, and credibility. Kelliher-Combs is one of only a few artists working with marine mammal gut. She brings to her art the richness of her experience growing up in Nome, her career as an internationally recognized artist, her life in Anchorage, and her insights as a person of Iñupiaq, Athabascan, and European heritage.
Visceral: Legacy expands Kelliher-Combs’s solo exhibition themes through a selection of objects from the museum’s permanent collection.
Visceral: Identity features gut parkas from across Alaska to highlight technical and historical aspects of this remarkable material in cross-cultural perspective.
Saturday, May 6, 10 am–4 pm (APK, outdoors)
Sunday, May 7, 10 am–2 pm (APK, indoors)
Intestine is the natural, indigenous version of plastics like Gore-Tex and has been used for centuries to make raincoats, hats, windows, drums, sails, canteens, and more. Learn how to process bear gut in this free all-ages program. On Saturday, we’ll clean and scrape intestine. The first two hours will be targeted for youth. On Sunday, help test for holes, inflate, and hang the intestine in the exhibit gallery. Drop-in participation is welcome throughout.
The Alaska State Museum is delighted to host Dr. Sven Haakanson, Jr., Sugpiaq scholar, curator, and artist, of the Old Harbor Alutiiq Tribe from Kodiak Island. Dr. Haakanson is the chair of the anthropology department at the University of Washington and curator of North American Anthropology at the Burke Museum. He has been engaging with gut since the early 1980s, cultivating networks of relationships among people, animals, and indigenous things made from gut to promote and revitalize indigenous science and values.
This program is partially funded by the citizens of the City and Borough of Juneau through sales tax revenues and is sponsored by the Friends of the Alaska State Library, Archives, and Museum.
|
Fridays, noon-1 pm, online
Story hours for kids are great, but why should they get all the fun?
Juneau author Sarah Isto joined us on 4/21 to kick off the reading of her memoir, Good Company: a Mining Family in Fairbanks, Alaska.
From the book jacket:
Good Company is a vivid and compelling story of life in early twentieth-century Alaska. During the lean years of the depression through World War II and Vietnam, Sarah Isto's family made a home in "company housing" in the small mining town of Fairbanks. With a wry sense of humor and an eye for detail, Isto tells of the courtship and marriage of her parents and her own Fairbanks childhood, weaving rich descriptions of daily life and northern living into her story. Good Company celebrates the joys and challenges of family life on the Alaska frontier.
|
Museum Spring & Summer Hours
Alaska State Museum
April 17-29: Monday, 12-4 pm; Tuesday-Saturday, 10 am-4 pm
May 1-September 30: Monday, 1-4:30 pm, Tuesday-Sunday, 9 am-4:30 pm
Sheldon Jackson Museum
April 17-29: Wednesday-Saturday, 10 am-4 pm
May 1-September 30: Monday-Saturday, 9 am-4:30 pm, Sunday, 1-4:30 pm
|
