ASM Exhibitions & Events

Lecture with guest juror Patrice Aphrodite Helmar

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25 at 5:30 PM
APK Lecture Hall, Alaska State Museum

Alaska Positive opens
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 4:30–7:00 PM

For 55 years Alaska Positive has encouraged photography as an art form in Alaska. This juried photography exhibition highlights the role of Alaskan photographers in today's visual culture. This year’s guest juror is Patrice Aphrodite Helmar.

Helmar is a photographer and artist engaged in the poetics of lived experience and everyday life. Their multidisciplinary work is concerned with issues of labor, class, queerness, and the politics of representation.

Helmar was born in Juneau and grew up working in their father’s small-town camera shop and darkroom. Their work has been shown at PARTICIPANT INC, the Jewish Museum, Ortega Y Gasset Projects, Gaa Gallery, the National Museum of Iceland, and other spaces.

They received an MAT from the University of Alaska Southeast in 2013 and an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University in 2015. They studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2022 and received a 2025 MacDowell Fellowship. Helmer is a Lecturer on Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University and Columbia University's Visual Arts MFA program. They live and work in Juneau and New York City.

Helmar will give a talk at the Alaska State Museum on Tuesday, November 25 at 5:30 pm.

Alaska Positive opens on Friday, December 5 at the Alaska State Museum and runs through mid-March 2026. A statewide tour will follow.

Image: Patrice Aphrodite Helmar. Tin Foil Crowns with Dolly Girl. 2020, gelatin silver print. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

First & Third Saturday of the Month, 1:30-3:30 pm *NEW TIME*
Alaska State Museum

Join us for sketching in the gallery! Bring your own sketching materials. Graphite, colored pencils, pen, pastels, watercolor, and gouache are all ok.

For ages 15+. All are welcome. Donations accepted, free for FOSLAM members.

We’re planning to meet the first and third Saturday of the month at 1:30 pm, through April (except state holidays). Questions? Call 907-465-2901.

Sponsored by Friends of the Alaska State Library, Archives & Museum

November 7, 2025 – January 10, 2026
Part of the Alaska State Museum 2024-2026 Solo Artist Exhibition Series 

Continuing My Grandmother’s Legacy is an exhibition of works by Golga Oscar. Oscar is interested in the traditional and contemporary lifestyle of the Yup’ik culture. Through his knowledge of traditional art forms and sewing skills, he creates cultural attire that becomes a strong visual element in his photographic imagery. 

In Continuing My Grandmother’s Legacy, Oscar takes self-portraits wearing parkas, mukluks, and masks from the museum’s collection. Oscar explains that he uses photography to show “the concept of two worlds, Indigenous and Western identity, which tells a story about my art career and how it saved me despite Western influences.”

The exhibition features Oscar’s textile artwork, including Yup’ik headdresses and parkas, as well as ledger drawings and beaded/quillwork artwork. Oscar uses various techniques to create his work. He draws from Yup’ik methods and other methods influenced by Indigenous groups in North America.

Oscar was born and raised in the village of Kasigluk, near Bethel. He is a fluent Yup'ik speaker and is dedicated to keeping his culture and traditions alive and relevant by teaching the next generation about their language and art.

Lou Logan is making a qayaq (kayak) in the tradition of his Iñupiaq ancestors from Wales, Alaska. He is studying a qayaq frame in the museum’s collection and constructing his open-sea qayaq in the gallery. 

Images: Lou Logan. Photo by Molly Briggs. Logan’s iqyax^ (Unangan kayak), 2020. Photo courtesy of Lou Logan.

XX: Twenty Years of Alaskan Art is a new exhibition at the Alaska State Museum featuring the work of contemporary Alaskan artists. The exhibit opens Friday, March 1.

The museum acquired these pieces over the last twenty years though the generosity of the Rasmuson Foundation’s Alaska Art Fund.

Initiated in 2003, the Alaska Art Fund provides grants for Alaska museums to purchase current work by practicing Alaskan artists.

Thanks to the Fund, the Alaska State Museum has brought over 200 works of art valued at nearly half a million dollars into its permanent collection—the most significant donation over time, in terms of dollar value, in the museum’s 124-year history.

The Alaska Art Fund is managed by Museums Alaska and has donated over $6.7 million dollars to museums statewide for the purchase of art.