ASM Exhibitions & Events

February 7 – April 12, 2025

The Alaska State Museum is pleased to announce Slinkies and the Window Frame, an exhibition by Tamara Wilson featuring studio work and site-specific installation created out of a variety of ingredients including remnant tile, truck bed liner, imitation bubble gum, oak, felt, and expanding foam. The exhibition desires to understand the domestic by pretending and discovering who and what occupies that space. The objects and creatures are created from a place of nostalgia, longing, and cosmic curiosities.

Wilson is a multimedia artist from and working in Fairbanks, Alaska. She creates artwork influenced by daily life in the beautiful ancestral lands of the Dena People of the Lower Tanana River where she has built her home and studio. After receiving a Master of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico and attending a residency in Estonia, Wilson returned home to Alaska.

Wilson is one of six artists selected for the Alaska State Museum 2024–2026 Solo Artist Exhibition Series, along with artists Myesha Callahan Freet, Shgendootan George, Joel Isaak Łiq’a yes, Ree Nancarrow, and Golga Oscar.

Image: U-Turn (detail) by Tamara Wilson. Image courtesy of the artist.

Saturday, April 5, 10:30 am-12:30 pm
Alaska State Museum

Plants are a wonderful way to bring joy into our homes during the dark months of winter. A Forever Plant can withstand the challenges of a dry cabin and or those that lack the green thumb to keep traditional house plants alive. From cactus to monstera: with the use of felt fabric, sewing, a little hot glue, a repurposed container, and your imagination, if you can cut it out, we can grow your Forever Plant. Join Fairbanks multimedia artist Tamara Wilson, and bring your Forever Plant to life in this workshop recommended for students ages 10-19.

Registration is encouraged - fill out the registration form to reserve your spot.

December 6, 2024 - March 15, 2025

Sharing the World I Know is a new solo exhibition featuring quilt works by Fairbanks art quilter Ree Nancarrow. 

For 50 years, Nancarrow watched a small tundra pond outside her window called Deneki Lakes. She tracked the shifting habitat at the lake as the water level dropped over time. Fewer species live there now. 

In 2010, Nancarrow started working with scientists through a program called In a Time of Change, which supports collaboration across the environmental arts, humanities, and sciences in Alaska. She explains how this collaboration informed her work: “The knowledge and deeper understanding of the natural world gained from working with these scientists has changed how I see the world, and how I describe it visually. That knowledge and concern for the world I live in led me to tell stories of climate change such as wildland fire, permafrost melt, development of greenhouse gases, bark beetle infestations, and creation of methane bubbles.”

She makes her quilts with custom-printed fabric. The fabric features images and designs she has collected and created over her art career. She sews them together and quilts each piece with intricate designs, enhancing their rich imagery and detail.

Both the exhibit opening and lecture are free. The exhibit runs through March 15, 2025.

Image: Ancient Dwellers by Ree Nancarrow

Ree is one of six artists selected for the Alaska State Museum 2024–2026 Solo Artist Exhibition Series, along with artists Myesha Callahan Freet, Shgendootan George, Joel Isaak Łiq’a yes, Golga Oscar, and Tamara Wilson.

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.