Cultural Reflections - Inuit Art

Cultural Reflections: Inuit Art from the Collection of the Dennos Museum Center

November 3, 2005 - May 28, 2006

The Dennos Museum Center's Inuit art collection boasts one of the largest and most historically complete public collections of contemporary sculpture, prints and drawings by the Inuit artists of the Canadian Arctic to be found in the United States. This major collection is permanently showcased in the Power Family Inuit Gallery, where the works are presented in new exhibitions annually.
The works in the Dennos Museum Center's Power Family Inuit Gallery present a survey of Inuit stonecut, stencil and lithograph prints, and sculptures 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.

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.

James Houston
James Houston arrived in Inukjuak in 1948 and lived among the Inuit in the Arctic until 1962 . He slept in Igloos, hunted walrus, ate raw seal meat and traveled by dog team. While in the north a stone carving was kindly given to him by an Inuit man. This gift in the hands of James Houston, brought Inuit art to the attention of the rest of the world.

James Houston, author, designer, and filmmaker, was born in Toronto in 1921. He studied art at age 11 with Arthur Lismer at what is now the Art Gallery of Ontario, and later at the Ontario College of Art. After the war, he studied life drawing in Paris at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and engraving at Atelier 17 with William Hayter. In 1958-59, he studied printmaking with Unichi Hiratsuka in Tokyo.

After five years of wartime service with the Toronto Scottish Regiment (Canadian Active Service Medal '40-'45), he went in 1948 into the Canadian Eastern Arctic in search of a new people and a new land to paint. He then worked through the Canadian Guild of Crafts, the Federal Government and the Hudson's Bay Company to bring to the attention of the outside world the flourishing Inuit sculpture of stone, bone and ivory carving. Houston was for nine years Northern Service Officer and Civil Administrator of West Baffin Island in the Northwest Eskimo Co-operative. Mr. Houston lived in the Canadian Arctic from 1948-82. Until his death he, continued to visit the Canadian North and Alaska each year on various projects, and lectures widely on Inuit and Indian art and culture.

A Master designer for for Steuben Glass, Houston's sculptures, in crystal, metal and plexiglass, along with his drawings and paintings, are in museums and private collections throughout the world. His designs often use an Arctic or wildlife theme. His sculpture, Aurora Borealis, a 70-foot work of polished prismatic spheres, is on permanent display in the central staircase at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary. He designed the National Geographic Centennial Award. In 1970, he won the Chicago Book Clinic design award.

He is the author and illustrator of 17 books for children, half of which have won international book awards. He has three times won the Book of the Year for Children Medal from the Canadian Library Association (1966, 1968, 1980), twice the Canadian Authors Association Metcalf Award (1977, 1981), Canada Council's Children's Literature Prize (1986), B.C. Book Prize (1987), and the American Library Association Notable Book Award (1967, 1968, 1971, 1977). He has twice been the nominee from Canada for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, Ibby (1987, 1991). Titles of his children's books are: Tiktla'liktak, Eagle Mask, The White Archer, Akavak, Wolf Run, Songs of the Dream People, Ghost Paddle, Kiviok's Magic Journey, River Runners, Long Claws, the trilogy: Frozen Fire, Black Diamonds, and Ice Swords, also The Falcon Bow, Whiteout, winner of the 1989 Max and Greta Ebel Memorial Award, and Drifting Snow, published in 1992, nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award and the Silver Birch Award of the Ontario Library Association. Fire Into Ice is a non-fiction book about glassmaking.

Houston's novel, The White Dawn, a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection, was published in 11 languages, 31 editions, and adapted to his screenplay for a feature for Paramount Pictures. His adult novel, Spirit Wrestler, also concerns the Inuit of Baffin Island. Ghost Fox, for which Houston also wrote the screenplay, is set in Canada and New England during the French and Indian Wars. His novel, Eagle Song tells of Northwest Coast Indians in the early 19th century. Running West is the story of Thanadelthur, a Dene woman, and William Stuart, a Hudson's Bay Company post servant, and their exciting journey through unknown lands. For this book, Houston received the 1990 Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for Fiction. His most recent novel is The Ice Master. His memoirs are Confessions of an Igloo Dweller and Zigzag: A Life On the Move.

Houston is the producer and director of the documentary films: So Sings the Wolf, Kalvak, Legends of the Salmon People, and Art of the Arctic Whalemen for the Devonian Group, Alberta-Glenbow Art Museum. He has made a series of limited animation films of native legends for NBC, and was technical advisor for documentaries, including The Living Stone and Kenojuak, with the National Film Board of Canada. For his work with documentary films, he has shared in the winning of 26 international film awards.

In 1966, James Houston was given the American Indian and Eskimo Cultural Foundation Award, Washington, D.C., and he was given the Inuit Kuavati Award of Merit in 1979. He served on the Selection Committee for the Inukshuk Sculptures for the Toronto International Airport, 1962, and the Selection Committee for the Sculpture Inuit International Exhibition, 1972. He received the Queen Elizabeth Silver Anniversary Medal, 1977, "For outstanding personal achievement." The Royal Canadian Geographical Society awarded him the 1997 Massey Medal.

Houston was given the degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa, by Carleton University, Ottawa, in 1972, for his: "great contribution to the art and welfare of the native people of Canada." He was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and honorary member of the College of Fellows of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. He was awarded the degree Doctor of Humane Letters from Rhode Island College, 1975, and the degree Doctor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, 1979, and was made Honorary Fellow, Ontario College of Art, 1981. Dalhousie University conferred upon Houston the degree Doctor of Laws, 1987, and in the same year he was chosen to deliver the May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture in the field of children's literature, and received the Citation of Merit Award from the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. In 1992, he was selected among the 125 most significant Canadians in the country's 125-year history. At Rhode Island College, he established the James Houston Award in Anthropology/Geography.
Mr. Houston died in 2005.