“This tremendous gift will ensure that these historically significant items will be a resource for all Alaskans and museum visitors in perpetuity through the collective public trust,” said Museum Director James Pepper Henry.
Anchorage was a young town in the territory of Alaska beginning its journey to becoming Alaska’s largest city when the Cook Inlet Historical Society was formed in 1955, dedicated to the discovery, preservation and dissemination of knowledge of Alaska history in general and Cook Inlet history in particular. Members of the society, recognizing the importance of the history of Anchorage and the Cook Inlet region, began collecting art, historical objects and cultural items representative of Alaska’s Native cultures.
The collection was exhibited at Anchorage’s Loussac Library and other city buildings, but over the years the founders recognized the need for the collection to have professional care and a permanent home. That dream was realized in 1968 when the CIHS collection of 60 paintings and 2,500 historic and ethnographic objects was placed on loan to the museum, then a newly opened facility known as the Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum.
Forty years later, at the Anchorage Museum’s anniversary celebration this past May, James Barnett, president of the society, formally transferred ownership of its collection to the museum. Barnett called the collection of paintings, documents and objects the “backbone of the museum’s collection.” -- www.anchoragemuseum.org
