New NHA Exhibition:
Gift of the Whale: The Iñupiat Bowhead Hunt—
A Sacred Tradition, opens March 27
NANTUCKET MA: The Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) is pleased to announce that its spring exhibition, The Iñupiat Bowhead Hunt—A Sacred Tradition,will open to the public on Saturday, March 27, in the Peter Foulger Gallery of the Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street.
The Iñupiat Eskimos have lived and hunted in the Arctic region of Alaska for over five thousand years. Central to their lifestyle and survival is the bowhead whale, a primary source not only of food, building materials, and barter goods, but also of art, legends, and cultural identity. The Iñupiat communities continue to pursue the bowhead in their annual hunts, which occur in the spring and fall. They manage the hunt under a cooperative agreement with the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and the federal government through NOAA. The International Whaling Commission has allotted the Iñupiat a block quota of 255 bowhead whales between 2008 and 2012. They may strike between sixty and eighty whales in their annual season. The average annual number of whales landed has been forty-one over the past ten years, out of a population estimated at over ten thousand whales, which is steadily growing.
The exhibition will feature the photography of Bill Hess, who documented the bowhead hunt in his book Gift of the Whale: The Iñupiat Bowhead Hunt, a Sacred Tradition. With patience and openness, Hess earned the trust of the Iñupiat community, and was invited to document the hunt. His photographs share a startling and deeply moving portrait of a community fully engaged in the pursuit of the bowhead whale. The exhibition will provide visitors with a glimpse into a contemporary society that owes its survival to the hunting of whales, not unlike the island of Nantucket at the height of the Golden Age of whaling.
The exhibition will also include the documentary film, The Eskimo and the Whale; Arctic carvings in ivory from the NHA collections; Iñupiat music; speakers/presenters Bill Hess, Robert Hellman, Bill Tramposch, Ben Simons, and an Iñupiat whaling captain. In April, wooden-boat builder Corey Freedman will build a traditional Umiak under at tent on the Museum’s side lawn. The exhibition will be on display through June 13, 2010.
