Magazines - Tribal Art Winter 2009
How Can Two Continents Share a Collection?
By Anne-Claire Laronde
Introduction The Château-Musée in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, holds an exceptional group of artifacts from the Kodiak Archipelago in Alaska. It consists of 226 objects produced by the Sugpiaq people, a native coastal culture from the western Gulf of Alaska. Within this collection are seventy-six wooden polychrome masks, and this subgroup is the subject of an experiment that allows Kodiak’s Alutiiq Musuem1 and the Château-Musée to explore methods of working together in a way that is unusual for small institutions of this kind. This collection raises interesting issues about how museum objects can be shared. How can the artworks be studied, exhibited, and made accessible to a maximum number of people when the museum that today houses them is on the other side of the world from the people who created them? In this case, exploration of this question has led to surprising new perspectives. |