Responsible things.

What an interesting title, right? I've been thinking that based solely on these blogs it would seem as though Griffin and I have just been playing around Alaska enjoying a footloose and fancy free vacation. This is true on the weekends. However, during the week we have both been putting in a hard 40 hours to finance our magical summer. I decided it was time for a blog on the job that brought us here and financed our trip. Sorry, I know this isn't as exciting as whales.

I work at the Pratt Museum. The Pratt Museum is one of THREE American Association of Museums accredited museums in ALL OF ALASKA. To put this in perspective, Illinois has 30-40 accredited museums (source: Jay Rounds). It's a wonderful little museum that shares the same problem that many Alaskan museums do; they are in possession of some of the most precious and quickly deterorating artifacts of the world and they have access to the fewest professionals to care for them. This is where I come in. My grant asks that I help the museum review their collections and help them organize their database and reassess the situation. I'm going to leave the description at this and not get into some of the nightmare-like dilemmas that have come up. (Okay, one example: the day I spent trying to identify the correct way to label six pairs of dentures belonging to a Homer homesteading family.)

While that is the bulk of my job here, I've also had other great opportunities. Next week, I'll be working along visiting curator Ron Senungetuk, "the father of Alaskan contemporary art", to install a new Alaskan native art exhibit. A few weeks ago I flew into Seldovia Bay on a tiny plane and hosted Culture Camp for several native children. It was pretty weird "teaching" the children about Alaskan peoples when they were clearly far more Alaskan than I would ever be. Alaskan children really have some special sense of wonder and appreciation for nature. They were all jumping in the water, climbing trees and rocks, and generally being completely free. The obsessive self-awareness that plagues our preteens and teenagers was hardly ever there.

Culture Camp location:


Dena'ina Athabascan and Alutiiq storytelling:


Artifact discovery!



We set up an archeological dig site for the kids that actually included different layers based on time periods. Each child had a tool kit and used proper procedure to excavate the area.



We were situated in a place where cave paintings by the Dena'ina had actually been found nearby. After taking a short walk to the cave where the paintings were (and nearly getting stuck there at high tide), we made paint out of natural pigments in the area. The most successful was made from a dark red rock that washes up naturally on the shores here and was actually used by natives. Then, we painted!




Alexis chose to use her face rather than the rock.