ASM Exhibitions & Events

May 2-October 11, 2025

Forming an emerald ring around the circumpolar North, the boreal forest is the world’s largest land-based biome. Also known as taiga, it accounts for approximately one third of Earth’s total forest area and covers the majority of Interior Alaska.

Boreal Forest Stories is a cross-disciplinary, collaborative project examining change in the boreal forest through narrative. For over a year and a half, 44 creators, including artists, writers, environmental educators, and humanities scholars, exchanged knowledge and perspectives on the boreal forest with scientists and explored narrative as it applies across the disciplines. Through their original works, participants relate stories rooted in the boreal forest, including its ecology, its inhabitants, and their interactions.

ITOC is directed by Mary Beth Leigh. Artists Margo Klass, Ree Nancarrow, and Susan Campbell curated the visual art exhibit and artist Jennifer Moss contributed graphic and web design.

ITOC: Boreal Forest Stories was made possible with funding from the National Science Foundation through the Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research Program with additional support from the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology, the Rasmuson Foundation through the Harper Arts Touring Fund – administered by the Alaska State Council on the Arts, and other sponsors.

Image: Come Sit With Me by Margo Klass

PROGRAMMING

May 2, 2025
Lecture with ITOC director Mary Beth Leigh, artist and poet Susan Campbell, and artist Jennifer Moss

September 5, 2025
Reading/lecture with author Corinna Cook

October 3, 2025
Phyllocnistis populiella, a live performance by puppet artist Maïté Agopian, musician/composer Sean Dowgray, and poet Daryl Farmer

Image: Phyllocnistis populiella (aspen serpentine leaf miner) by Maïté Agopian

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.