Past Exhibitions

Mariano Gonzales has a reputation for fearlessness. He is bold and experimental as artist, activist, and educator at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Perhaps no creatures better reflect the climate, landscape and culture of Alaska and the Arctic than the walrus and polar bear.

Alaska Biennial celebrates place through the lens of contemporary art.

The dramatic photographs of Bradford Washburn (1910-2007) reflect his ongoing fascination with the beauty of Alaska's peaks and glaciers.

What happens when artists believe that public art leads to an improved community as a catalyst for safety, cleanliness, creativity and conversation.

This multi-media exhibition celebrates salmon culture in Alaska in its many forms, from commercial, subsistence and sport fishing to processing, preserving and eating.

Opening in the centennial year of the completion of the Alaska Railroad, this exhibition looks at the history, impact, and legacy of the railroad through archival images, objects, and ephemera.

Amy Meissner's textile art combines traditional handwork and contemporary imagery to explore memory, fragility and the literal, physical and emotional work of women.

Step into the secret life of plants through an augmented reality experience with music

Teens create, write, and reflect on the ever-changing climate

The foremost British explorer of the 18th century, Captain James Cook circumnavigated the globe twice before setting a course for the northern Pacific.

Arctic Remix considers how Indigenous technologies have informed, inspired, or anticipated modern-day design and technology innovations.

A sphere encrusted with reindeer antlers, an intricate bone-laden tapestry and sculptural flora made from domestic textiles are only three of the many works unveiled in this first comprehensive look at Aslaug Magdalena Juliussen’s work.

Generations before statehood and earlier even than the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s, Black men and women arrived in Alaska and have since participated in politics, economic development, and culture.

Alaska photographer Kerry Tasker followed bore tide surfers out onto the silty waters of Turnagain Arm to document their idiosyncratic lifestyle.

Borealis charts the stories of the forests and people who live and work in them as climate change can be seen and felt more clearly in the High North.

Through the lenses of natural history, military history, art, design, technology, fashion and popular culture, Camouflage highlights the contrast between the functional and cultural.

Christina Seely's DISSONANCE and DISTURBANCE draw on Seely’s fieldwork in Greenland, Alaska, and Panama, and investigate how the proliferation of global trade networks and the worsening climate crisis are impacting the environment. 

Counter Cartographies: Living the Land presents contemporary artworks that examine our relationship to land, proposing alternative ways of thinking about and experiencing the landscape around us. 

Created to Hold Power (Intellectual Property) is a digital solo exhibition of new works by Nicholas Galanin.

Be prepared to look at the world in a whole new way in this exhibition on Alaska fossils.

Change is both the subject and the medium of this series by artist David Pettibone.

Dear Kin is a storytelling project that highlights individuals from the Alaska Native Two-Spirit and LGBTQI+ community through video and portraiture.

Explore the enduring mystery behind Sir John Franklin’s tragic expedition. Through historical artifacts and Inuit oral history, this groundbreaking exhibition provides the most comprehensive account to date of Franklin’s final voyage. 

Dena'inaq' Huch'ulyeshi: The Dena'ina Way of Living, curated by the Anchorage Museum in 2013, was the first comprehensive exhibition about Dena’ina Athabascan people presenting Dena’ina history and culture through art, music, storytelling, re-created settings and hands-on activities.

Ephemeral State is an art project that seeks to capture the elusive qualities of water in its three physical states.

Artists, mothers, scientists and makers included in this exhibition testify to the vital role that both Indigenous and newcomer women have in Northern communities, guided by principles of gender equity, sustainability and strength.

Good Medicine brings together a group of Indigenous healers and medicine people to collectively create, share knowledge, and practice in community.

For the people who reside there, Alaska’s Arctic isn’t a curiosity, a wasteland or an untouched wilderness — it is home.

Colonization suppressed traditional tattooing in Alaska, but a new generation of Indigenous women are revitalizing and restoring the practice.

The Place I Call Home reflects the people, places, textures, and moods photographer Jovell Rennie associates with his hometown of Anchorage, Alaska.

Adaptation and resistance, exaggeration and lies, dreams and memories are recurring themes in Nicholas Galanin’s work.

An immersive soundscape formed by the blending of the Alaska field recordings with archival recordings, digital and electronic sounds and more create a listening experience that is both transient and meditative.

Artists and comic illustrators reveal the enduring power of story to bring people together and foster inclusivity and imagination.

A listening experience and a survey of sound art today from artists of Alaska and other parts of the US, Russia, Canada, and Scandinavia

With original interviews connecting the past and present, Mana: The History We Inherit offers insight into the histories of Filipinos in Alaska.

A Future Ready project by Anchorage artists Amy Meissner and Brian Adams addressing survival and our associations with place.

A multi-site-specific exploration of the linked forces of a changing climate and rising inequality that braids together allusions to freedom, survival, containment, and control.

The effect of Paola Pivi’s Lies symbolizes the seemingly endless amount of content many of us consume every day through screens and the confusion created by the spread of lies through mass communication.

Pass the Mic celebrates contemporary Alaska musicians and sound artists, inviting interactive participation in making and listening to the sounds and songs in Alaska today.

Perseverance, an unconventional conceptual installation curated by artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs, is a personal exploration of the transformative power of utilitarian objects.

Ridiculed by Congress and the press as Seward’s “ice box” and President Andrew Johnson’s “polar bear garden,” the 1867 purchase of Alaska from Russia was controversial at the time.

In times of pandemic, climate crisis, and ongoing assaults to human rights, Indigenous Alaska artists envision the future through design, tattoo, regalia, and graphic arts.

Inupiaq artist Ronald Senungetuk (1933-2020) was a world-renowned sculptor, silversmith and woodcarver who blended ancestral Inupiaq forms with modern concepts and materials.

Rowan Renee explores conflicting and complex ideas of femininity, such as the ability to give life and take life, and the divide between wildness and domesticity.

Celebrate the many ways salmon has nourished communities physically and spiritually for thousands of years. 

This landmark exhibition presents an overview of Sámi history and visual culture from the 17th century to the present.

From snowmachines and kick sleds to adapted winter gear and equipment, Snow Flyers celebrates decades of Northern ingenuity for survival, sport and transportation.

Stuart Hyatt uses sound art and science to examine the relationship between humans and the Earth.

This exhibition explores the things people like in our mass and global culture.

Providing context for the PBS Kids series Molly of Denali, the first children’s TV series featuring an Alaska Native lead character, this exhibition presents historical overview of Indigenous people represented in media.

Thomas Chung reaches beyond words to illustrate, celebrate and mourn the human experience.

This multimedia installation and two-month performance by artist Allison Akootchook Warden takes the form of an Iñupiat ceremonial qargi. 

This international contemporary art exhibition highlights contemporary investigations into the Arctic through the perspective of artists.

Visitations by Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson explores how polar bears interact with humans in times of climate change.

A virtual exhibition by artist Mary Mattingly that proposes a mobile and wearable future through ideas of shelter within an absurd dystopic commentary about over-consumption and possible solutions.

Indigenous leaders, activists, artists and scholars address common misperceptions about the North, fostering critical commentary about these issues through the exhibition “Without Boundaries: Visual Conversations.”

The Yup’ik people have no word for science yet their tools were so well designed that they allowed the Yupiit to live in a land no one else would inhabit.