KETCHIKAN — Six pieces of Alaska Native art that belonged to the former curator of the Alaska State Museum and the Sheldon Jackson Museum in Sitka have found a new home in Ketchikan.
The Tongass Historical Museum received the pieces from Peter Corey’s massive Alaska Native art collection after he died in September, The Ketchikan Daily News reported.
The donated pieces now part of the Ketchikan museum’s collection include three baskets, a bottle cover, a painted hat and a cedar bark cover hat. The artworks were created in the 1970s by Haida weaver Selina Peratrovich, with painting done by Ketchikan artist Nathan Jackson, according to museum director Lacey Simpson.
Corey, who also helped with the installation of totem poles at the Totem Heritage Center, was known to have kept a large art collection at his Sitka home. He kept the pieces in decent condition and maintained records on many items.
“They have been going through and processing things in his house and sending items to the appropriate places that he designated, but it sounded like he had thousands of things,” said Hayley Chambers, the museum’s senior curator of collections. “Baskets inside of baskets inside of baskets.”
Of the pieces received by the museum, the cover hat is less likely to be found on display in exhibits.
“There usually aren’t any in museum collections,” Chambers said. “I’ve been talking with some folks at the Anchorage museum to better understand their purpose, or why they might have gone out of use, and it sounds like … it might have been an issue of the painted one being a little more exciting for people that are buying them, and they don’t know that the cover hat served a purpose — to protect the painted one.”
Simpson said the painted hat, if it were worn, would have been strictly kept for ceremonial use.
The woven bottle cover was also of interest to the museum for its representation of Native traditions.
“Covering bottles with basketry has been sort of a curio tradition for a really long time,” Simpson said. “Once manufactured glass bottles started to make their way into the northwest coast, it was a great kind of ready-made form. They really appealed to visitors and tourists.”
Chambers and Simpson are still figuring out times and locations to put the items on display.
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Information from: Ketchikan (Alaska) Daily News, http://www.ketchikandailynews.com
