During the Spring 2015 semester, Art Properties worked with Elizabeth Hutchinson, Associate Professor of Art History, Barnard College/Columbia University, and her students on a set of ten drawings from the 1890s made by the Inupiat people. These drawings depict aspects of a ceremonial ritual still performed by some groups in Northwest Alaska, and are part of the extensive Bush Collection of Religion and Culture, donated to Columbia by alumnus and Philosophy instructor Wendell Ter Bush (1867-1941). The result of this curricular collaboration is an exhibition curated by Prof. Hutchinson with her students and installed in the Gallery at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Hamilton Hall, on the Morningside campus of Columbia University. These fascinating drawings, made by unknown indigenous artists, document moments in the Messenger Feast, an essential event in the ceremonial lives of the Inupiat people. The drawing seen here depicts the Wolf Dance. Entitled “Messages from across Time and Space: Inupiat Drawings from the 1890s at Columbia University,” the exhibition runs September 22-November 20, 2015.

For more information about these works, visit the accompanying exhibition website.

Video – https://vimeo.com/143379011