The Northwest Territories’ Prince of Wales Heritage Centre is making hundreds of its fine art items searchable online, something museum curatorial assistant Ryan Silke says will bring one of the biggest collections of northern sculptures, paintings, prints and textiles to users without leaving their home.
“We have a lot of artists that are well known, very prolific across the territories and many of them are still producing today so we’re really happy to showcase those works,” Silke told CBC Radio Trail’s End Host Lawrence Nayally.
The centre is launching an online collection where people can view the centre’s vast art selection, giving greater access to a trove material that people might not otherwise be able to see it.
This matches the direction of many large museums beginning to host their collections in digital portals.
“This is one way to bring collections directly to the user,” said Silke, adding that museums lack exhibit space and there can be challenges to getting people to come see them in person.
A 1994 painting by Inuit artist Germaine Arnaktauyok called Sedna — The Storm. The painting is one of 1,400 artworks included in the museum’s new online portal. (Germaine Arnaktauyok/PWNHC catalogue number 994.007.001)
Silke said that during the pandemic, heritage centre staff worked with software engineers to build a web portal based on one part of the museum that classifies fine art — that includes paintings, drawings, sculptures and tapestries.
It has items from the likes of Carver Dolphus Cadieux, Inuinnait graphic artist Helen Kalvak, Métis artist Don Cardinal, painter James Wedzin and Inuk printmaker, painter and drawer Germaine Arnaktauyok.
There are also contemporary and lesser known artists like Didy Woolgar, a watercolour artist from the 1960s, Gwich’in painter William Bonnetplume, who created oil paintings, pen and ink drawings, cartoons and even wood sculptures and Wally Wolf who made many aviation-themed paintings.
Berry Pickers, a painting by artist Don Cardinal, also appears in the museum’s new online portal. (Estate of Don Cardinal/PWNHC catalogue number 978.055.006)
The collection includes world famous sculptures by Harold Pfeiffer who commissioned bronze bust statues in the 1970s of prominent Northern people like Stuart Hodgson, Annie McPherson, midwife Harriet Gladue, and bush pilot Clennell Haggerston “Punch” Dickins.
The bronze statues “really immortalize” the individuals, said Silke, and hold significance for their descendants who may wish to view these items.
The works are from the N.W.T., but include artworks made in the eastern Arctic.
Because the museum has only 1,400 fine art pieces — out of a total of 75,000 items — the museum felt it would be an easy collection to start with.
“Art is not really a well used part of our collection because we’re not by definition an art gallery.”
“In the coming years we really will be working on making photographer and other collections related to science and cultural history [available] as well,” said Silke.
The works shown were collected over the 40 years of the museum’s existence and include creations from more than 200 artists.
Each item is searchable by artist, culture, region or date, and will be featured with information about the artwork as well as high-definition photos.
Silke encouraged anyone who is interested in particular items to be made available on the search to let the museum know.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
