For the last 4 months we have had the most wonderful Alutiiq masks on the Alutiiq Museum walls. They were collected by a frenchman, Alphonse Pinart, on Kodiak Island in the 1870s and finally made it home for a visit last May after being in a Museum in France for over 130 years. Absolutely amazing to see these pieces close up - to see how big they are, and to look at how they were carved. They are completely different from their pictures in a book. And today they all came down.
At the museum we spent the day taking them off of the walls and packing them away for their trip to Anchorage. They will be at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art for a few months before they make their way back to France. Here in Kodiak I had grown used to seeing them in their cases on the walls. They looked pretty cool. But when we opened the cases to take them down I was shocked how much cooler they looked without the surrounding layer of glass. Nothing quite like the hands on experience. It was an honor to be so close to them.
In the photo Sven Haakanson takes a mask off of its mount prior to packing it away for the trip to Anchorage. For more information about the masks check out the Alutiiq Museum website at Alutiiqmuseum.org - the link to the exhibit is on the left under 'Like a Face'. Patrick
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