RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION PRESENTS WORK OF ICONIC ALASKA ARTIST RON SENUNGETUK

WIDELY EXHIBITED INUPIAQ ARTIST BLAZED NEW TRAILS FOR INDIGENOUS ARTISTS AROUND THE WORLD.

March 24, 2021

RON SENUNGETUK: A RETROSPECTIVE
On view April 2, 2021 – Oct. 3, 2021
Anchorage Museum, Second Floor, West Wing

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA – March 24, 2021 – A traveling exhibition presenting the life’s work of Inupiaq artist Ronald Senungetuk (1933-2020) opens Friday, April 2, at the Anchorage Museum with a virtual panel discussion about his life and work led by artist Kes Woodward presented online at 4 p.m.

Senungetuk was a world-renowned sculptor, silversmith and woodcarver who blended ancestral Inupiaq forms with modern concepts and materials. This exhibition presents works created over his career. His works have been featured in exhibitions and public art installations throughout Alaska and the U.S. He was a leading advocate for art in Alaska and helped establish the Native Art Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1965.

Senungetuk was born in Kingigin, also known as the village of Wales, Alaska, at the western tip of the Seward Peninsula. He studied art with master craftsman George Fedoroff at Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka. After being drafted into the Korean War, he returned to complete a bachelor’s degree in fine art at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s School for American Crafts in New York. A Fulbright Scholar, he also studied Scandinavian design at the Statens Håndværks og Kunstindustriskole (Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry) in Oslo, Norway.

Senungetuk designed neckwear featuring silver and gold with walrus ivory in abstract forms. He made woodcarvings from exotic hardwoods, such as rosewood, teak, and silver maple, communicating minimalist ideas and Alaska Native sensibilities.

This exhibition opened Dec. 12, 2020 at the Museum of the North in Fairbanks and will continue on to the Pratt Museum in Homer following its run at the Anchorage Museum. The exhibition is presented with support from Jan and Jeri van den Top.