Museum receives major donation of Inuit art
Estate of Margaret Hess gifts Canadian Museum of History almost 1,000 pieces
This 1974 sculpture by Naujaat artist Madeleine Isserkrut Kringayark is one of the hundreds of pieces donated by the estate of the late art historian Margaret Hess. (Image courtesy of the Canadian Museum of History)
The Canadian Museum of History has been given hundreds of pieces of Inuit art from across Nunavut and Nunavik.
The pieces were donated from the estate of the late Margaret Hess, a Canadian art historian and philanthropist who died in 2016.
The gift from the Hess estate includes some 750 sculptures, 120 pieces of paper artwork and other historical material she collected from 30 communities throughout Nunavut and Nunavik, including major art centres like Cape Dorset, Baker Lake and Inukjuak.
The collection is unique in that most of the pieces were made by women artists.
“The works, in a variety of materials and styles, strengthen the museum’s existing collections while offering new perspectives on Inuit Nunangat through the eyes of important first- and second-generation Inuit artists from the 1950s to the 1980s,” the museum said in a Feb. 5 release.
“Dr. Hess kept meticulous records that will allow scholars to study Inuit artistic trends across region, gender and time.”
Hess, who was born in Calgary in 1916, studied art in Toronto and worked closely with members of the Group of Seven over her career.
Her interest in Indigenous art took her North starting in the 1950s, where she began meeting Inuit artists and collecting their work. Hess opened Calgary Galleries Ltd. in 1970 to promote Indigenous art.
The federal government recognized her work in the North by naming an archeological site on Ekkalluk River in the Kitikmeot region as the Hess Site.
Archivists at the Canadian Museum of History, which is located across the river from Ottawa in Gatineau, Que., will begin to digitize all the newly donated pieces.
The museum said it plans to launch a travelling exhibit to showcase the Inuit art in the Hess collection.
They should be given to the descendants of the artists.
Why? They were purchased by Margaret Hess. Do you know what that implies? Do you know what private property is?
The artists sold them to Ms. Hess and they were her property to do with as she chose. As it turns out she chose very well. It is fitting that they were donated to a museum and not resold and resold etc….for more profit but will be showcased and enjoyed by all. She obviously held indeigenous art in high regard, cataloguing and keeping meticulous records of each piece. They couldn’t have been in better hands.
Its too bad it was not donated to the museum of Nunavut, a lot of the descendants could see what their parents/ grandparents had made and the rest of Nunavumiut.
At least there will be stored away and brought out from time to time.
Good for the Hess estate.
Nice headlines for the museum.
Good for Canada? …not so sure.
This big collection will go into a vault and never be seen. They are doing NOTHING with their collections of Inuit and Indian arts nowadays. The national gallery across the river isn’t doing much more.