Evolving Inuit Art At The Rockwell

CORNING, N.Y.

:The Rockwell Museum of Western Art will present, as the last of four special exhibitions this year, "Cultural Reflections: Inuit Art from the Collection of the Dennos Museum Center," November 4-May 29.

This exhibition will give viewers the opportunity to view the evolution of the dynamic Inuit culture still in process and to experience the native culture of the icy Canadian Artic through collections of contemporary sculpture, prints and drawings by Inuit artists. The collection is a reflection of life on the land; a record of daily events and serves as a visual narrative for keeping alive the old ways; the old life of skin tents and snow houses, the nomadic life when seasonal hunting dictated lifestyle and, in essence, survival.

The Dennos collection boasts one of the largest and most historically complete public collections of Inuit contemporary art by the Inuit artists of the Canadian Arctic to be found in the United States. This major collection is permanently showcased at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Mich.

The works in "Cultural Reflections" present a survey of Inuit stone cut, stencil and lithograph prints, and sculptures from the late 1950s to the present. Selected from more than 1,000 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.

Worldwide awareness of Inuit art originated with the assistance of James Houston, noted artist, author and designer for Steuben 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, Mich., established a nonprofit gallery 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.

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.

The exhibition will open with a reception at 5:30 pm on November 3 at the Rockwell Museum of Western Art, which is on the corner of Denison Parkway and Cedar Street. The reception is open to the public' reservations can be made by calling 607-974-2333. Visit rockwellmuseum.org for more information.